


things that go whump in the night 2

by Miss_Ash



Series: things that go whump in the night [2]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, HAPPY BLOODY WHUMPTOBER MY FRIENDS, I'm kidding I write fluff sometimes too, MFMMwhumptober, THE ANGST IS UPON US, going down the only trope I've ever knooooown, heavens to betsy I'm excited, heeeeere I go again on my ooooown, sometimes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2020-11-16 14:38:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20844434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Ash/pseuds/Miss_Ash
Summary: My ridiculous, hopefully longwinded, and definitely a little devastating contribution to MFMM Whumptober 2019. Just like last year, this will be a collection of as many of the prompts as I manage to fill. Summaries, ratings, and warnings at the beginning of each chapter. Happy whumping, everyone!





	1. Shaky Hands

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot, repeat cannot, begin to explain how excited I am that it's Whumptober again. Not only is it my favourite, angsty time of year - but it also marks a whole year since I started writing for this wonderful show, fandom, and these silly, sassy detectives. Admittedly there is far more, by a ratio of about 10:1, unposted sitting in my gdocs than on here - but let's ignore my lack of _ finishing things _ and just celebrate the fact that it's whumping season once more!!
> 
> If you're joining me for the second go around, then the same rules apply as last year. If you're new to this ridiculous venture then be warned that I am known to sometimes break the whump rules, and go for the sad ending. Anything that is darker, angstier, or doesn't guarantee the comfort ending you might desire will be marked with an (A) in the chapter notes. Heed this wisely, I am an angst goblin, after all. 
> 
> Day 1 - Shaky Hands, G

_September 21st is a hard day for Phryne. _

*

It falls on a Thursday this year, not that she makes note of it on the approach – it just so happens that as she drifts off to sleep on the Wednesday, it occurs to her that tomorrow is Thursday, and thus Thursday is the day it falls on. 

Phryne decides, in that moment, that she suddenly doesn't care for Thursdays. 

She's prepared, as normal, she's mentally readied herself for it – heart and mind all extra padded up and ready for the way that everything will hurt just that little bit more today. As normal, she makes it through most of her morning as if nothing is different, nothing on her mind. 

The problem comes when a case turns up at her door, quite unexpectedly. 

Someone's daughter has disappeared – eloped, they think, with the baker’s boy – and they want to make sure she's safe. Phryne accepts it – and the picture of a sweet looking, fair-haired girl they press desperately into her trembling fingers – without question, and then shuts herself in the parlour for half an hour to breathe deeply and wait for her hands to stop shaking before going to get her cloche. 

She follows the obvious trail of two young lovers, lacking in parental approval, doing as young lovers do and looking to strike out on their own – start again elsewhere. She follows it to what looks like it might be a satisfying conclusion, until it doesn’t.

When the evidence of foul play turns up she drives her car straight to City South, struts past the door into the alleyway out back, and starts crying. 

She's sitting on a pile of crates trying to control her breathing when Jack finds her.

He says nothing, reaching out to wrap steady hands around her still shaking ones. Then he wraps his arms around her and waits. When her breathing has finally begun to slow, he speaks.

“I'd ask you why you're working today but why ever you started I assume you don't plan to stop, so just tell me what I can do.” 

“Send men to search the docks,” she tells him, voice flat. “I expect they'll find a body, maybe two.” 

She takes a breath, then pulls away from him. 

“I'm going home.” 

He nods, keeping hold of her hand a moment and squeezing. Then he lets her go. 

.

It's hours before Jack gets home himself, and he looks far wearier than those hours should have made him. This is how she knows. 

He shuts the parlour door and pours out two whiskeys, bringing her one and sitting a careful distance away along the chaise. 

“Both of them?” 

Jack nods, taking a healthy swig of the amber pain relief in his glass. 

“His father already confessed.”

“Over a bloody bread shop,” she spits out, and takes a long drink of her own whiskey, standing to pace towards the hearth. 

“He says he only went to persuade Fred not to turn his back on the business, but that it got physical and when she tried to pull them off each other he slapped her away too hard and she fell. She was an accident, but then Fred attacked him again and he defended himself.” 

“Is that supposed to make it better?” she asks, biting. 

Jack shakes his head. “No.”

“Good, because it doesn't.” 

She takes another drink, then slams her glass down on the mantelpiece, pacing to the window, the piano, and back to the fireplace. She turns to face him. 

“It doesn't make it better, Jack.” 

“I know,” he tells her, voice impossibly gentle. He stands, crossing the room but stopping just short of her space, one eyebrow half-raised in question. 

Her body is a melting pot of emotion – grief, frustration, rage – and she's half afraid that if he touches her she’ll go off. She gives a tiny shake of her head.

Jack reaches for her glass instead, fishing it off the mantelpiece and handing it back to her. She takes it gratefully, draining the rest of the contents, then closes her eyes and lets out a long sigh. 

“I need to finish up some of the paperwork,” he says softly, and she opens her eyes again. 

“How long will that take?” She's not ready yet, but she doesn't want him gone too long, doesn't want him too far away even if she needs the space she knows he's deliberately giving her. 

“How long would you like it to take?” 

The tiniest of smiles threatens the corners of her mouth. “Maybe an hour?” 

Jack shrugs. “I think I have about an hour's work to do then.” 

He turns to leave, but as he reaches the door he hesitates, looking back at her. She knows what he wants, because she almost wants it too, but any physical affection right now will be more than she can handle. 

“Hurry back,” she whispers – and it's the most foolish thing she could logically say considering he's only leaving to give her space, but it's the closest to kissing him she can manage. 

“You won't even notice I'm gone,” he replies with a smile, and then ducks through the door to leave her alone with her thoughts. 

She pours herself another whiskey. 

.

She's waiting on the stairs when the door opens an hour and ten minutes later. 

“You're late,” she says from her seat on the second step, and he nods as he hangs up his coat and hat. 

“Traffic.”

“Likely story,” she hums, hopping up and walking straight across to him. She wraps her arms around his neck and presses her lips to his, sighing into the comfort and familiarity of his taste, of the way his own hands immediately move to hold her. There is something about the way Jack holds her, cradling her with strong fingers that touch her like she is precious yet not fragile, that makes her want to melt into him every time he does. 

He kisses her back deeply, reassuring and warm, then pulls back to pepper kisses along her jaw and up to her ear. 

“What do you need?” he murmurs, breath hot against her skin. She buries her face into his neck, eyes falling closed. 

“Tell me I couldn’t have saved her,” the words come as a quiet but desperate plea against his collar. 

“You couldn’t have saved her,” he says immediately into her hair, then he pulls back and waits patiently for her to meet his eye. “You couldn’t have saved either of them.”

She knows, without having to ask, that in this moment he’s not talking about Fred. 

They’re still for a moment, silent, then she nods. She allows some of the tension to fall from her shoulders, and reaches down to lace her fingers with his. As she does so, it occurs to her that her hands have finally stopped shaking. 

“Drink?” Jack asks, and she nods again, letting her lead him back into the parlour. 

This time he leaves no gap between them when he sits down with their glasses in hand, and as soon as she takes hers from him his free hand settles on her knee, thumb rubbing an absent pattern of comfort into the soft material of her trousers. 

He raises his glass in toast and squeezes her leg a little as he does so. “To Janey,” his voice is firm and kind, “and all the ones we couldn’t save.”

Phryne manages a soft smile at this, awed – as she so often is – by the depth of his heart, his ability to empathise so keenly and with so little guidance. Later, when she has buried her grief again to the swells of ecstasy, she will remind him how much she appreciates it. Tomorrow, when she is less raw, pieced back together again, and the words will have more weight than were they the mutterings of sorrow, she will remind him that she loves him for it. 

Now though, she will continue to grieve, and Jack – she knows without question – will sit and grieve with her now until she is done. She knows he will sit with her when this day comes around again the following year and she decides she suddenly doesn't care for Fridays. 

She swallows, takes a breath, and raises her own glass to his. 

“To Janey,” she echoes.

_Happy Birthday_.


	2. Explosion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He comes back broken. So much more than last time. Every time someone so much as drops a book, he's on the floor, hands over his head, ready for the end. Teen and Up. Strong (A).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A forewarning, this one went to a very dark place. I swear to Phryne, I tried to reel it in, but in all honesty it's a very serious subject matter and I decided if I was going to play in this sandpit, I wasn't going to sugarcoat it. I also couldn't decide which way I wanted to finish it, so in effect the story has two endings, one before and one after the ***
> 
> **TRIGGER WARNINGS** for PTSD, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Further notes and historical commentary at the end.

* * *

The second time around, it transpires, is so much worse than the first.

Worse in different ways, admittedly, in the intensity of the training and the agony of the waiting. In the tension and the fear and the constant pressure of being caught, shot, gassed, bombed.

The level of organisation is terrifying, the ruthlessness of their enemy’s hatred, the advancement in tactics and weaponry and sheer damn determination on both sides.

Where the last war was a street fight, an immature and disorganised scrap for territory, this one is a chess game, a meticulous and measured operation which, as it unravels, only proves that – black or white – the set of moves are still the same.

He comes back broken.

So much more than last time. The first time he had been young, naive enough to believe that his contribution mattered, the fighting isolated enough that he eventually learnt to sleep without the faces of dead soldiers behind his eyes. The first time had been a bitter fight for survival, them or us, soldiers versus soldiers – all of them just following orders.

They’d just been following orders this time, as well. The enemy had followed orders as they’d marched thousand upon thousand innocent soul into camps of torture and death.

They had followed orders, too. _He_ had followed orders as he gathered intelligence, observed comings and goings, identified targets. He had followed orders as he relayed information that turned into bombs, words into fire, that had burnt up towns and killed as many innocents as enemies.

Jack doesn’t know what haunts him more, the sound of the bombs he’d sheltered from or the sound of those his actions had led to. Either way the trauma that, in his youth, he had managed to compartmentalise somewhat is different this time. Unavoidable, inescapable. Every time someone so much as drops a book, he's on the floor, hands over his head, ready for the end, mind filled with the panic of self-preservation and guilt alike. Bang. Bomb. Is this for him, or his work? Is he dying today or the cause of death?

The last time he had learnt to sleep again if only because it had been a fair fight. It hadn’t been, not for a single digger of either side, but between them – in trenches built from the same mud with guns made to the same design – they’d had equally poor chances the lot of them.

The blood on his hands this time around had not come from fair fights, and he doesn’t know how to live with that. Even home – back in his bed, Phryne’s arms around him, words soft in his ear – all he sees behind his eyes are flames, all he hears over her comforts is the whistling of bombs, the crash of explosions, the screams of the dying. He is caught in one long explosion, the soil constantly falling away from beneath his feet.

It’s six months after he returned, stepping off a boat and into a sea of waiting arms (even Bert had pulled him into a hug, with a slap on the back and a suspicious glint of moisture in his eyes), that he finds he can bear it no longer.

The guilt is all-consuming, the fear paralysing. The comforts that had assuaged his demons at first – the smell of Mr. Butler’s cooking, the taste of the cocoa Dot had plied all of them with almost religiously, the sound of Jane reciting Shakespeare to try and help him centre himself, and the heavenly feeling of Phryne’s skin beneath his fingers again, her warmth beside him day and night – have all become lost to the flames in his mind. Instead all he feels when he looks at them, through a haze of destruction that hangs constantly behind his eyelids, is guilt.

They all have fresh demons of their own, he knows. None of them survived this unscathed – not even poor Dot, who never set foot outside of Melbourne, but had had the war come marching back up to her front door in a husband who had lost both innocence and half a limb. It fills him with shame that the both of them have managed better than him when his injuries are so much less severe. That he has struggled more than anyone to return to his life when Hugh is half an arm down and Cec and Bert stormed a beach and Phryne – God – Phryne had seen the very worst of it all. Phryne had seen far worse than him, and yet it’s her arms that have cradled him, and her words that talk him down when he is sweaty and screaming in the middle of the night.

He knows he is a burden – imagines Phryne feels much the same as Rosie did when he marched home again a different man to who he’d been when he left – and he wishes he knew how to remedy this, but he doesn’t. He sees no way out, no reprieve.

All he sees is fire, all he hears is death, and all he knows is that he wants it over.

A fortunate coincidence, then, that this final revelation comes to him as he’s facing down a bomb.

Perhaps this is just what he deserves finally catching up with him.

No one knows quite how the device got there – there's speculation that it was dropped by a stray Japanese plane, but despite what he's heard of those rumours being confirmed he can't help but question the likelihood of a single plane dropping a single bomb and it failing to explode, sitting dormant in the outskirts of Melbourne for three years. It doesn't matter, though, he supposes. Maybe it was dropped by the mythical plane, maybe the American’s just left it behind by mistake when they buggered off home again, who knows.

The point is it's there, sitting in a field waiting to explode, and by some twist of fate he's one of the people who's been called to deal with it.

His only regret is that he failed to tell Phryne he loves her when he left Wardlow that morning. That he has failed to tell her for more days than he cares to count since returning and failed to show her too. He realises standing here, thirty feet from death, that he has been preparing for this. His eyes have lingered on her longer in recent weeks, his mind has taken the time to memorise her scent, her laugh, her expressions of ecstasy as she comes apart beneath him. He has been slowly saying goodbye, he now sees, for far longer than he has been aware it was needed.

He just forgot to say it aloud. Forgot to remind her, before leaving, that he _does_ love her. He hadn’t known though, he supposes. He hadn’t known until now that this would be it.

He hopes she knows still, though. He hopes she will forgive him, that she will understand. He doesn't know if she will – whether she’ll think him a coward and be angry, or perhaps just be relieved – but either way, he hopes.

He closes his eyes and, for the merest second, sees just her face – smirking at him over a whiskey so very many traumas ago – and he almost smiles himself.

Then the flames come back, and his eyes snap open again. He turns to the other men in attendance, police and army alike.

“Create a wider perimeter, gentlemen,” he instructs them, voice a strange, deceptive calm that he wishes he could pride himself on, “I want you all to fall back beyond the tree line, outside of blast radius.”

The lieutenant in charge of the army contingent at the scene turns to him with a frown. “What do you mean, sir?”

“I mean what I said, lieutenant, I want you all outside of the blast radius.”

“Excepting my experts, you mean?”

“Everyone, lieutenant,” Jack says again, fixing him with a hard stare. “I'll be handling this.”

The man splutters a little, looking from Jack to the hillock hiding the distant device and back again.

“All due respect but this is an army matter now, Inspector. We should be handling it.”

“All due respect to you, lieutenant, but have any of your men actually diffused a bomb before?”

He hesitates, grinding his jaw. “Well, no,” he begins but throws up a hand against the argument he is at least smart enough to know will come. “But they're the very best, they all attended training with the Americans under MacArthur himself.”

“Here,” Jack points out, voice flat. “Safe at home in Melbourne. Your division was sent because you were the most readily available with training, granted, but what they didn't know – because you won't find it on official record – is that whilst you and your men were playing with the Americans, I was in France, diffusing these.”

The lieutenant’s mouth falls open in surprise, and Jack reaches over to give him a pat on the shoulder, leaning forward conspiratorially. He wants the man to know it wasn't his fault, when the time comes, to reinforce that it was out of his hands. “And quite aside from that, lieutenant, I outrank you – so as your Captain in this instance, I'm ordering you to take your men, and mine, and create a wider perimeter. I don't want anyone in the blast radius at all, understood? These things are notoriously unstable.”

He swallows, glancing once again in the direction of the device, and then gives a shaky nod. “As you command, Captain.” He gives a salute and then turns, gathering up the men and starting to fall back.

Jack turns to look towards the weapon himself, nestled thirty feet away in the grass, waiting for him.

It will be fitting, he thinks, and ambiguous enough so as not to cause those he loves any shame.

He hopes they will forgive him.

He hopes she will.

*

_“I'll never forgive you, Jack, if you don't come marching right back into this house again when this is all over.”  
_

She'd said it jokingly but deep down, she had realised the longer the war went on, the further he advanced and the farther away he travelled from her – untraceable, unreachable, undocumented – that she meant it.

She would have never forgiven him if he didn't come back.

She gets home before he does – not because her work is done but because she cannot bear a second more of it, cannot face another emaciated child and explain to them that their parents are gone. She can no longer summon the smile she needs to tell them they will be okay, that there are families waiting for them in England and new lives – all the while doubting that any amount of fresh country air will ever erase the horrors they've seen.

She is no good to them without that smile, and she knows it, her colleagues know it themselves as well, and when a relief team comes and she is finally free to, she does what she’s not sure she has ever done this way before – she flees.

Hugh is already there when she arrives, missing a piece, and decidedly more jaded than she has ever seen him, but still not absent of his optimism and thus more or less okay in spite of it all. Cec and Bert are a month behind her, spilling off a ship in good spirits like they’d just been down the pub, though there's something that lurks behind both their eyes she’s no doubt will spill out eventually over a pint or two too many.

Jane, perhaps ironically, leads the rehabilitation effort, working closely with Mac, and Dot, and Mr. Butler it is she who keeps things running as they all slowly start to return to their lives. She monitors their daily movements with all the discipline of her own warfound ranking, operating (to no one’s immense surprise) like a Warrant Officer more than a Driver. Phryne has no doubt that if the war had gone on long enough the rank would have fallen to her sooner or later.

It helps, to an extent, but it does not fill the empty seat at the table. It does not warm the bed that feels far too big and cold as she sleeps in it alone.

It's another two long months until finally the ship arrives that’s bringing him home, and for the first time in years she doesn't want to count she feels at ease, for a moment, watching her family reunite at the edge of the sea.

The ease lasts the length of the drive home, the meal, the celebrations, the desperate tangle of limbs as they finally reunite alone. It lasts through kisses and touches and cries of ecstasy, through whispered assurances and relieved tears, it lasts through the frantic scramble to hold and feel each other, to reassure themselves that they are real and they are alive and they are together again, _finally_, despite all the horrors they went through to get there.

It lasts until she wakes to him screaming, and finally she sees behind the wall of love and relief that had first greeted her.

Jack, she sees now in his eyes, lurking in the depths of his dark blue gaze in the stillness of midnight, is broken.

It's only over the days and weeks that follow that she comes to realise quite how much.

They exchange stories here and there, when they can bring themselves to. She tells him of the joy and relief she felt at every child she helped to safety, at the satisfaction she experienced every time it was her work, her intelligence that led them to help more people. She leaves the horrors of the conditions they found some of them in hanging in the pregnant pauses between her sentences. The smell of burning bodies that she knows she will never forget is told in the slight tremble of her lip as she recounts the events that led her to smell it in the first place.

She explains what she can of what she saw, but there is far more that she doesn't say simply for the fact she can't explain it.

Despite what’s haunting him he is still patient and receptive whenever she decides she wants to talk, and eventually his own stories start to become more detailed. Even as they do, though, he himself seems to become lesser – as if the very words are little pieces of him, every sentence, every confession, containing the fragmented pieces of his soul and as he speaks them aloud they float off into the air and disappear from him.

He jumps at the merest noise, sometimes he cowers, sometimes he grabs for a gun that isn't there.

The Commissioner asks him back to work and he goes, though she knows he isn't ready. She goes too because she won't let him face this alone.

She does her best to keep him calm at night but she sees on his face that her words are never enough to drown out whatever horrors he's hearing. She holds him tight and closes her eyes to face her own – somehow they have become the preferable option over keeping her eyes open and watching Jack in this state of constant torment.

She looks for ways to help, but she is at a loss. He is further gone than she knows how to reach. Further gone than those she’d seen immediately after the last one, further gone than the rest of the family, further gone than she is.

She speaks to Mac at length, who is patient and supportive as ever but whose news is bleak.

“It was bad after the last one, Phryne, but that was only the surface. There's wardfuls of them in every hospital across the country. Across the world, I expect. This is what happens when you send mortal man into incomprehensible horror – they lose their minds.”

“Is that what's happening?” Phryne asks, and watches Mac studiously try to school the pity that springs to her face. “He's losing his mind?”

“Aren't we all?” Mac jokes but it falls terribly flat. “You're troubled by it too,” she adds then, changing tack. “I know you are even if you claim not to be.”

“I'm almost too tired to claim, honestly, Mac,” she sighs, and Mac stands, pulling her into a hug she does her absolute best not to cry into. “I miss him,” she whispers into her friend's shoulder. “All the more because he's not all gone. He still kisses me like nothing can touch us, still teases me like when we first met. Sometimes he laughs and it's like everything melts away for a moment and then comes crashing down again all the harder for it.”

Mac squeezes gently. “He may never heal, Phryne, I don't want to make you promises I shouldn't.”

“I know,” and she does.

The worst is that she knows, even if she doesn't want to accept it, that there is little else she can do for him. Phryne Fisher’s biggest fear – a problem there is no way for her to solve.

Jack’s pain is beyond her skill to heal.

“I lost three patients last month alone,” Mac tells her then, expression grave, and Phryne frowns.

“Lost how?”

“Suicide.”

The word slices through her, cold and angry. She doesn't like what Mac is suggesting.

“That's not Jack,” she shoots back. “Jack is… he's bad but he isn't…” but she can't finish. All she can see is the exhaustion long set into his brow, the weariness with which he operates his daily life – the mechanical, emotionless cycle broken only here and there by moments of joy or ecstasy strong enough to shock him briefly out of it.

Maybe, she realises with absolute crushing dread, Mac is right.

She has refused, this entire time, to think of Jack as lost to her.

Broken, yes. Weary and jaded and floundering in ways she has tried her utmost to help with – but not completely lost. In her mind she has always seen his good moments, the smiles and laughter which are not all gone, as hope that slowly he will heal.

Suddenly she wonders if they have been a bandage for her own conscience, if those tantalising glimpses of normality were just a mask for moments when he couldn’t stand her pity any longer or couldn’t bear the grief she cannot hide as she examines his pain.

What if Mac is right, and he is more lost to her than she ever dared believe?

“Mac, I should go,” she says, stepping away from her, panic rising in her chest like an oncoming storm.

Mac narrows her eyes. “I’m not saying it’s that bad, Phryne, I’m just warning you of where it could go.”

Phryne nods, though the action feels distant.

Everything that has happened seems to play itself over in her mind, and she sees it all anew, without the foolish haze of hope to colour any of it. She sees the clear trajectory of Jack’s slowly worsening condition, the way that his smiles, even if they have seemed more frequent, have been dimmer, reaching less and less of his face as he offers them. She sees again glances that she only caught out of the corner of her eye, Jack’s eyes on her face as if committing her to memory, fixed on her as if she is the only thing that matters. She feels his hands on her skin, ever more desperate, and whispers of touch as they lie together in silence and suddenly she fears that he’s been saying with his eyes and his hands that which he cannot bring himself to aloud.

Suddenly she fears that, for weeks, he has been slowly saying goodbye.

“I have to go,” she repeats, and turns to flee from Mac’s office.

Perhaps she is wrong, she thinks, as she speeds through the busy midday streets. Perhaps this panic is just her own trauma playing on her mind and this is a foolish fear. Perhaps this is a manifestation of her own dark moments, her own fears for herself and for him which she has been suppressing since the moment they left these shores to march back into battle.

Perhaps she is wrong.

She hopes she is wrong.

“He was called out to a public emergency an hour or so ago,” the constable (Howard, his name is, he’s only been on the force a moment, bless him) at the desk tells her when she marches in to find his office empty. He looks around, then leans forward conspiratorially. “It’s not public knowledge since they don’t want to cause a panic, but a kiddie found a bomb out near the old American base. There’s a rumour going around that it was dropped by that Jap plane, but Inspector Robinson said it was probably just left behind by the Yanks accidentally.”

Phryne feels her entire body seize up.

Even if she is wrong, even if Jack is not where she fears he might be, the idea of him facing down a bomb is enough to make her nauseous. She knows, from what he’s said and what she has pieced together, that that is where the final root of his trauma lies. The bombings he was nearly killed in, and the bombings he was part of that killed others.

A bomb is the worst possible thing he could be confronted with.

She hopes she is wrong, but she fears now that even if she were, she is about to become right.

*

He walks across the thirty feet of grass with his shoulders squared, and his chin held high.

It wasn’t a lie that he had no doubt diffused more of these than the infant soldiers they had sent him – being that none of them looked to ever have faced battle – but his statement had still been something of an exaggeration.

He’s diffused two of these, one with help – not that it really matters anyway, so long as he leaves it long enough that they think he tried.

It’s sitting in a small dip less than a metre from a trench, months of plant growth carefully scraped away from its sides. The army were useful for something at least, it seems.

It’s a 500lb MC, not the largest, but Jack had always thought that the size differences in these things were negligible. What was five hundred pounds of explosive compared to two-hundred and fifty anyway? Another half a building destroyed, another twenty dead? He had wondered on many occasions if, if perhaps that was how they labelled the weapons, it might give everyone more reason to pause.

Everyone had wanted to brag that their bombs were bigger, fewer might want to brag that their bombs had the bigger death toll. Though at least this device never achieved its full potential. This bomb will only kill one.

He breathes deeply and takes a knee, removing his hat and placing it on the ground beside him. He wishes, briefly, that he had left it at home – Phryne would hate the waste of good millinery.

Phryne had bought him the hat.

He closes his eyes, wishing her face to him again, willing her image through the constant devastation behind his eyelids. If only for a moment, he begs his tortured mind, let me see her.

And she’s there, crowned in flame and surrounded by screaming, but she is there – her face and her smile and her hands. An anchor that keeps him grounded.

Even on his worst days, it’s the thought of that smile that had pulled him through. Surrounded by nothing but dirt, destruction, and death there had always been the thought of her – up to no good as always, laughing in the face of danger.

He’s never had her ability to do that, too sombre, too serious, too focused on the realities of a situation. She’s lightened him over the years – oh, more than he ever could have imagined – bringing out the playful spirit that had lurked inside him behind a warrant card and the weight of dead friends in a war that never should have happened.

He had survived that one, pulled through the pains and traumas to live again, even if it had taken a while. He had escaped the flames, remembered how to have fun again. He knows, deep down, that it is possible – it’s just that it feels so impossible right now. Has felt so impossible for so long.

He pauses, torn suddenly.

It’s worse this time, so much worse. He’s so lost in the mists of his own guilt, in this never-ending explosion that rips the ground from beneath him at every turn – but there have still been glimpses, haven’t there? He thinks of his friends, of his misfit family, of his partner.

For a split second, the flames part, and all he sees is Phryne – just Phryne – and then the rest of them. He sees poor, injured Hugh, still recovering but determined despite his setback. He sees Dorothy, the children, their little family – battered, but not broken. He sees Bert and Cec, staunchly carrying on just like they had after the last one – laughing and joking like nothing has changed even though their eyes say they have. He sees Mr. Butler, mothering them all despite the fact he should have retired years ago, his loyalty such that Jack doubts he will ever leave whilst he still draws breath. He sees Jane, his all-but-daughter, fussing from up close and a distance to look after the surrogate parents who had looked after her.

He sees Phryne. Herself, but muted. Loving, but terrified. Silly as ever, but so much more serious.

They all have found a way to continue in spite of it all. They all have found a way to hope. More than this, they all have him – have had him – from the moment he stepped off the ship, from so many years before that. Deep in his heart, he realises, he doesn’t know if he can leave them like this – if he can repay them all for their love and their loyalty and their hope by going without so much as a goodbye.

It’s kinder for them, though – he tells himself – _surely?_ It gives them freedom from the darkness that has invaded him. They have hope, he has none, and he will not be their rotten apple.

This is for them. Isn’t it?

Or is it for him?

The distinction no longer seems clear.

Reality settles on Jack suddenly as he realises his hands have reached out to caress the cold metal of packaged destruction in front of him.

Why hope has arrived at the climax of hopelessness, he just cannot fathom. Something which should have been easy, clear cut, a welcome relief suddenly feels messy and unclear.

Jack hesitates, blinking down at the bomb, at where his fingers sit ready to make a choice between peace and pain.

He doesn’t know which option is which anymore, but it’s far too late to start deliberating it at length.

This is the best thing for everyone, he knows it is.

He thinks he knows.

Jack reaches for the small dials, fingers trembling.

He closes his eyes, searches his mind again for that smile, and sighs.

He makes his choice.

*

Phryne leaps from her car and doesn’t look back as she approaches the army barricade. There is a small gaggle of uniformed people hovering by a makeshift fence, varying expressions of concern splashed across their faces – faces she scans with panicked eyes, heart in her throat.

Jack’s face is not there.

She zeroes in instead on the lieutenant’s pips of a man close to the front of the group – the highest ranking person she can see – and does her best to tamp down on terror that’s attempting to claw its way up her throat. Perhaps, she tells herself, the fact that Jack doesn’t appear to be here is because he was smart enough to remove himself. Perhaps he is home, safe at Wardlow again being fed cocoa by Mr. Butler.

“Excuse me,” she calls, and is proud at the lack of tremble in her voice. “Lieutenant?”

He looks up, frowns, and turns to a man by his side.

“Wilkins, I thought we cleared the area of all civilians!”

“We did, sir!” the man supplies, “There’s men stationed at all the roads leading out here.”

“Oh, they didn’t mind letting little old me through,” Phryne smiles, switching on as much charm as she can manage. “I just explained who I am and they were more than happy to oblige.”

“And who’s that?” the lieutenant eyes her up and down, wholly unimpressed.

“The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher,” she says with as much authority as she can convey with it. “And I have some expertise in this field that you might find useful.”

The man raises an eyebrow, clearly not buying it. “With diffusing bombs, Miss?”

She adopts the haughtiest expression she can, and eyes him up and down. The man barely looks old enough to have the two stars on his shoulders and she can tell, by a brief once over of his immaculate exterior and too-bright eyes, that he hasn’t seen battle. Not really, not like she has.

Not like Jack has.

“All due respect – but I was stitching up soldiers at Pozieres whilst you were still learning the alphabet, lieutenant, and I’d dare say I saw a little more action during my time aiding the Red Cross in Hanover than you did here cleaning General MacArthur’s boots – wouldn’t you?”

It’s a gamble, but it pays off. “I…” with this hesitation he’s lost already, but she allows him to continue just because the amusement of it is helping to steady her frayed nerves. “Well, I… I’m sorry, I didn’t know you served, Miss Fisher – but even so we have the situation under control, and you’re still a civilian so I can’t just let you – ”

Phryne takes a step into his space, allowing her expression to cool considerably as she does so.

“Do you know what bombs sound like, lieutenant?” she asks, voice flat, and he blinks up at her. “Do you know how the ground shakes and the soil beneath you feels like it’s going to fall away from under your very feet to let the ground swallow you up? Or how the sound of an air raid rings in your ears for hours afterwards, bouncing around your head until you can’t think of anything else but the sight of buildings falling or people screaming and running for their lives. It rips through you, you know, the sound of a bomb, cuts you down to the bone.

“They’re tricky things to diffuse as well, all tiny dials and dull clicks, and if you make one wrong move then BAM!” He jumps. “You’re dead. Ripped into more pieces than anyone can ever hope to scrape back together to put in a coffin. I’d hate to see you go like that, lieutenant. I’d hate to see one more person go like that as long as I live.”

The lieutenant swallows, and nods, but stands his ground. “Then it’s a good job we already have an expert on hand to diffuse it,” he says, though his tone is far less authoritative than before.

Phryne pauses. Everyone gathered here looks fresh out of cadet training – none of them could possibly be experts, not real experts.

“Where?” she asks, and he points.

“Diffusing it.”

She turns to look out into the field, but the terrain is uneven and she can see neither bomb nor expert.

“Who did you get?” she asks, the panic returning as she continues to stare into the field in the vain hope of seeing detail. “Who’s your expert?”

“Inspector Robinson.”

Her heart feels like it stops beating in her chest.

“Although it’s Captain Robinson today, I suppose,” he adds in something of a grumble. “Since he pulled rank on me.”

She whips back around to look at him, her entire being seemingly focusing back in on this man and what he has to say, information so vital she cannot stand the waiting for it. “He what?”

The lieutenant appears to barely suppress an eye-roll. “He pulled rank,” he repeats. “Gave me the same spiel as you pretty much – I tried to explain that I studied diffusing explosive devices under MacArthur himself, I’m more than qualified, dammit, but he wouldn’t hear it – insisted that he be the one to go out there.”

Phryne swallows, feeling suddenly nauseous. “He did?”

She had wanted, so badly, to believe that she was wrong, that Mac’s words would be a warning but not a prophecy. She had felt it though, in her heart and her gut, the minute it had been said. She had felt that she was right.

It might not have been today, she thinks, it might have been in a week, or two, or maybe even months. Fate, it seems, has intervened on that front though.

There will be some poetry to it, she has to acknowledge, and fears that’s where his own head will be. He won’t think of it as fate, because he’s never believed in such trivialities, but he will no doubt think of it as deserved, earned even. He will think that this is how he reaps what he has sown.

She understands all of it, can see the thought process as if it were her own, but she has never disagreed with him more.

This cannot be it, she thinks, this cannot be his end.

She doesn’t think she could bear it if it were.

“Miss Fisher?” the lieutenant interrupts her silent dread, and she realises that he has been saying something.

What, she has no idea, and fails to see how it could be important. How can anything be more important than what’s about to happen ninety feet from them?

“I need to get out there,” she says suddenly, and he blinks in surprise.

“Absolutely not.”

“Oh, I wasn’t asking, lieutenant,” she adds, voice clipped and deadly. “And you won’t be stopping me.”

She doesn’t care if Jack thinks this is the end, she decides, it’s not.

It can’t be.

She _refuses_.

At least not like this. Not as punishment to himself for something that doesn’t warrant punishing. Not at the hand of a war he survived and should be free of. Not when she didn’t know, couldn’t try to help, couldn’t tell him she loves him and just wants him to be free of suffering.

Not before she’s said goodbye.

If it has to happen, if there really is no other avenue left for him, then she will find a way to accept it – but this can’t be how it goes.

She’s halfway to the fence before she realises she’s crying, but she ignores the tears.

“Miss Fisher,” the lieutenant calls after. “Miss Fisher, I really must insist, I can’t let you – ”

“Don’t,” she snaps over her shoulder. “Don’t talk to me, lieutenant, or I’ll see to it that you’re demoted so fast you won’t realise it’s happened until you’re peeling potatoes.”

His mouth slams shut, and she turns away from him again, eyes fixed on the field which, somewhere, holds her heart in it.

“It is generally advisable not to try and get in Miss Fisher’s way when she wants something, lieutenant.”

Phryne freezes.

“Inspector!” The word isn’t hers, she is unable to move, unable to speak.

“I told you to leave it to me, lieutenant – no trouble at all.” The words come in Jack’s voice, all Jack’s sass and attitude in them, yet she doesn’t see how they can be his.

“Phryne?”

She swallows, gathers herself, turns.

Jack is standing there, hat in his hand, and his demeanour is casual as all get out but his eyes tell a very different story.

He knows she knows, she can see it there. There’s horror and apology both, hanging behind the blue.

Yet he is here, standing in front of her. Not a ghost because they all can see him too.

Jack is alive, and the soil hasn’t fallen away from beneath her.

The lieutenant appears to be stuttering out some kind of thanks, but Phryne hears none of it – she knows, from his decisive nod in the man’s direction after far too long tearing his eyes away from her – that Jack didn’t either.

“Anytime, lieutenant – though let’s hope we never meet again, shall we?”

“Quite,” he agrees. “But thank you again, Inspector – er, Captain, sir!” He salutes, and the rest of his men follow suit. Jack shoots them a rueful smile.

“Inspector’s just fine.”

“Right, sir, thank you.”

Jack gives them one more grim nod, then returns his gaze to her.

“I assume you brought the car, Miss Fisher?”

She takes a shaky breath and paints on a signature smirk. “You know I have no patience for roadblocks, Jack.”

He rolls his eyes, the expression nothing but fond. “Lead the way, then.”

The lieutenant’s eyes drift back and forth between the two of them, some realisation seeming to dawn that he is missing a large chunk of the situation. Phryne steals herself to movement, striding back past the gathered troops, past Jack, and leading the way towards wherever it is she left the car in her haste.

“Take care, lieutenant,” Jack says over his shoulder, and she hears him fall into step behind her.

The drive home is silent, and Phryne uses it to focus on her breathing.

She feels half-broken, exhausted, reeling from the emotional whiplash of the last hour. She had been sure, _certain_, that she was right. Jack’s eyes tell her she is. So why is he still here, still whole and breathing beside her? No word or thought could express how grateful she is for that fact, but it does nothing to help her understand it. If she is right, if he has given up, then how is it that he hasn’t – not quite yet?

Hope, without her willing it to, springs.

Maybe, just maybe, this means he has fight left. Maybe this means that, in spite of everything, her Jack is still holding on in there. If nothing else, she reassures herself, at least she gets this. At least she still has him now. They can talk, finally, name his demons instead of allowing them to haunt them unvoiced as they have been doing.

And whatever comes next, she tells herself, at least now they can face it together. 

***

Once the car is parked and the front door open, she allows him to set the scene – and Jack is grateful for this. He debates, briefly, heading straight upstairs to the privacy of their bedroom – but he doesn’t want to darken those walls with this. To have this conversation there would be to set a fire in their sanctuary, and he doesn’t want the words he has to say in those walls. In any walls, in fact, where they will soak in and echo back as long as either of them remain standing.

He refuses to do that to her house. To their house.

He chooses the garden. He loves the garden dearly, has tended to it with patience and care over the years, but flowers wither and die and he can plant new ones. The garden will forget this conversation in time.

She follows him wordlessly, and he is beyond grateful for it, rubbing a weary hand over his face and waiting for her to seat herself on the bench they have sat on together so many times in so many happier circumstances. He allows the memory of those times to surface, to fill him, steady him.

It’s odd, really, how quiet his mind is now compared to the screaming destruction of earlier. Like a curtain has parted and clarity has settled. He feels like he is taking the first deep breaths he has taken since 1940.

“You know,” he starts with, because he respects her far too much to bandy platitudes or nothings about getting to the point.

She meets his gaze, expression wholly unreadable, and nods. “Yes.”

“I wasn’t – ” he starts, then stops and tries again. “I didn’t know, not completely, not until today. I think perhaps I knew and couldn’t admit it. Didn’t _want_ to admit it,” he confesses – there’s no point not being honest, she deserves his honesty, certainly considering what he’d been about to do to her. He meets her eye with all the sincerity he can. “In my head I suppose I didn’t want to face it, because that meant I would have to tell you, and I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to think of me as cowardly.”

“I would never think that of you, Jack,” she replies, and he’s almost shocked by the ferocity of it. “Never.”

He stares at her, the reality of it all starting to swell, smother him. The words claw their way up his throat, words he has thought over and over and hidden from her, himself, from every facet of his mind except the one that whispered them in the first place.

He tells the truth.

“I wanted to die, Phryne.”

It comes out as a choked, half-whisper.

She shows no outward reaction other than the clenching of her jaw and the heartbreak that spills, out of whatever restraints she has put in place, into her blue eyes. It escapes down her cheek as a single tear.

“I know.”

He stares back at her, at the careful control that holds her still, and knows. He had come so close, so desperately close to ending it all, to letting a bomb (American or Japanese, what did it matter anyway, the damage would have been the same) tear them both to shreds with a single explosion. He knows as he looks at her though, that it would have been the worst mistake he could have made.

He is not alone in this, whatever else his mind might want him to believe. She is sitting here now, silent as she may ever have been, letting him say this, letting him admit this horrible truth and he knows – because he can see it in her face without having to search – that there is no anger in her. No resentment. She is grieving a loss which hasn’t happened yet – but for all the things she has blamed him for over the years, all the screaming rows and arguments that have even, on occasion, come close to destroying them – none of that fire is present here.

Her silence is her sign that she understands, and the relief of it is a weight off his shoulders on its own.

There is stillness, for a moment, as he simply looks at her. Then she speaks.

“You didn’t, though.” It’s a question, though it isn’t phrased as such. It had been clear to him from her presence, her demeanour, her pure shock at seeing him, that this is not the outcome she had expected.

In all honesty, it isn’t the outcome he’d expected either.

He’s still not completely sure how that has happened.

“I didn’t.”

She swallows, gaze dropping to the geraniums that sit in the bed behind his feet. “Will you?”

The words are quiet, and he cannot help but feel rattled by the directness of them, despite expecting their coming.

“One day, I’d expect, unless someone’s failed to tip me off to my own immortality,” he replies with a rueful smirk. He pauses, then takes a shaky breath. “Not today.”

She looks up at him again, and he sees that more tears have gathered in her lashes.

“Not today?”

He shakes his head, emphatic. Whatever clarity this is that has descended, whatever peace that his mind seems to have found at the climax of despair, it feels like the very solace he had sought as he stared down a bomb. There is still screaming, still flames licking at the edge of his consciousness, but this? This is that sweet silence that he thought he would never, _could_ never find again. This hope, he has to acknowledge, long minutes after he had caved to it, feels real.

“Not today, Phryne.”

The breath of relief that escapes her seems with it to deflate all the rigid control with which she had been holding herself. She sags, one hand coming to her face, and he realises a second too late that she is sobbing. Instantly, he moves, arms surrounding her, pulling her from the bench and into him, tucking her beneath his chin.

She clings to him, and he clings to her, breathing her in, allowing himself to truly feel the comfort of her arms.

“I thought I was too late,” she tells him, the words desperate, the emotion she has so clearly been holding back pouring out of her. “I thought… Jack, I thought I’d never… I thought you were lost.”

He closes his eyes, focuses on the sensation of holding her, allows the weight of her against him to keep him anchored. He has been lost. He has been so very lost, drifting around in a cloud of his own despondent hopelessness – so detached that he could no longer feel the earth beneath him. For so many months, he has felt as if he is living one constant, never-ending explosion, the earth always quaking, the very soil below him falling away beneath his feet. She is here though, they all are, and the world – he starts to remember – is still. The ground is solid. _She_ is solid.

He cannot make her promises for tomorrow, he can’t even make himself any, so he won’t. He cannot tell when the next bomb will hit, if it will hit. What he can do is be grateful for this, for her, for the fact that today, at least, he is still – somehow – whole.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers against her, and she shakes her head.

“You don’t have to apologise, Jack.”

“I know, but I am.”

He can feel her sobs starting to subside, the trembling of her body starting to lessen as, slowly, she comes back into herself.

“I won’t make you promise never, Jack, because I don’t know if you can.” She pulls back a little to look at him, to meet his eye, and he sees the understanding in her. Even if there were words, he couldn’t thank her enough for it. She is firm and matter of fact, accepting. "Just promise to say goodbye.”

He swallows, speechless. What she’s offering is more than he would ever dream of asking her.

“Could you let me go if I did?” It’s a genuine question, because if their situations were reversed he’s not honestly sure he could, he’s not sure he could give her that – in her position – and it’s not one he wants to put her in, should it come to it.

“I don’t know,” she admits, honest. “Maybe that’s exactly why I’d need it.”

He tilts his head in acquiescence at this. After all, saying goodbye was where he had faltered in the end, wasn’t it?

When it had come down to it, in what would have been the final moment, he had realised that he wouldn’t just be floating off, he would be cutting a cord, weighing anchor and setting sail.

When he’d stopped to say goodbye, the screams had stopped with him and he’d known he wasn’t ready. Not today, not like that.

Not at the hand of a war he had ultimately survived and wants like almost nothing else to be free of. Not when she hadn’t known, hadn’t had the chance to say the goodbye he’s been saying silently for so many weeks. Not without telling her he loves her and he just wants her happy.

He cannot promise tomorrow, he knows, but he can promise her goodbye, if this is what she needs.

“Alright,” he agrees, a quiet vow into her hair.

“Thank you,” she whispers against his skin, and for the first time in all the weeks he’s been saying that goodbye himself, he allows himself to feel her breath against him and not memorise it like it’s the last time. He allows himself to feel grounded, anchored, safe.

Even if just for now, he says hello, and the explosion ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, so first off, if you made it here - I am _so_ sorry, I promise it's gonna be much less angsty from here, this just sort of needed to come out. Secondly, I couldn't bring myself to give this the tragic ending it could have had, so I hope I have managed to hit an okay balance between a somewhat hopeful ending - because it very much _is_ possible to come back from these places, it all just depends on the individual and their circumstance - and not making it seem like twu wuv saves him, because that was very much not my intent in the writing of this. 
> 
> Finally, on the positive side, I had an absolute BLAST on my historical research for this. I mean, wasted so much writing time down research holes, and thus I simply had to share.  

> 
> * **The Mysterious Japanese Plane** \- On the 26th February 1942, pilot Nobuo Fujita took off in a floatplane from Japanese Submarine I-25 in Cape Wickham to fly a daring reconnaissance mission over Port Phillip Bay. Many residents claimed to have seen a Japanese plane flying over Melbourne however, due the public fear in the wake of the Japanese bombings in the North, reports of this mysterious sole plane remained officially uncomfirmed until 1945. Though Fujita's missions were strictly reconnaissance, some twin float design floatplanes were able to carry a torpedo in the belly, and thus - theoretically - could be used for bombing. You can read a little more about Nobuo Fujita and his role as a pilot [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_Fujita).
>   

> * **General MacArthur** \- On the 27th December 1941, Australian Prime Minister John Curtin made a historic announcement following a demand to Winston Churchill for reinforcements, _"The Australian Government...regards the Pacific struggle as primarily one in which the United States and Australia must have the fullest say in the direction of the democracies' fighting plan. Without inhibitions of any kind, I make it clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom."_. In the following March of 1942, after the commencement of Japanese air raids on Darwin (the bombing of the 19th February marking the first time that ever that enemy forces had attacked mainland Australia - unless, of course you count colonialism which frankly, I would) President Roosevelt ordered General MacArthur to form a Pacific defence plan with Australia. Curtin placed Australian troops in the Pacific under the General, who moved his headquarters to Melbourne. American troops began amassing in Australia, and MacArthur became Supreme Commander of the South West Pacific.
>   

> * **Melbourne in WWII** \- Despite being so far south, the spirit in Melbourne, as in the rest of Australia, particularly after the commencement of Japanese air raids in the North, was largely recounted as being uneasy. Prominent buildings were sandbagged and bricked up, and trenches were built around the city. There was dislike, particularly from men, towards the American troops but relations were further strained on all fronts when a serial killer who strangled three women in May was revealed to be US Marine Eddie Leonski.  
[This](https://www.racv.com.au/royalauto/travelling/victoria/melbourne-world-war-two.html) article holds some interesting personal insight into Melbourne's role in the war though, like with all things, I would encourage validating anything in there through other sources wherever possible. 
>   

> * **Phryne's role** \- I thought long and hard about what Phryne might have done to help in the war, and decided that it definitely wouldn't be something conventional. I felt that, considering her language skills and talent for subterfuge, I definitely see her finding her way to helping out with resistance movements across Europe, but I also felt that come D-Day, she likely would have doubled down to help with rescue efforts, and thus decided I would have her helping with the aftermath of the Holocaust as concentration camps were liberated. On 21st April, five British Red Cross teams were sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, later to become Bergen-Belson displaced persons camp, where they staffed the hospital, took care of children, and established canteens to feed the inmates. Efforts were made here (as they were across all displaced persons camps) into reconnecting children with families or, in the case of those with no family left, finding somewhere for them to go. British philanthropist Leonard Montefiore persuaded the British Government to accept 1000 displaced children. 732 eventually made the journey, only 80 of whom were girls. I certainly think that, had Phryne been there, she would have been the one making sure the girls got a chance, too.
>   

> * **Final fun factoid** \- The term whiplash came into common usage in '45 - just making the cut for use in this fic!


	3. Delirium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hugh does a double take at the sight before him – at his superior leaning back in his chair with his bare feet propped up on his desk, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. 
> 
> Of all the things he’d expect to find the other side of the door, this is most assuredly not it. 
> 
> Or, Jack is sad and Hugh is a sweetheart. Combined prompt with Day 7 - Isolation. G.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a battle from start to finish, and took on some heavy cuts and reworks in the final quarter which I'm still not altogether happy with. I just wanted to write a little Jack and Hugh friendship piece but, Christ, did my muse have a fit about it. However, in the interests of not giving up and letting prompts gather dust in my gdocs unpublished, I've decided this year we're just cracking on with it and that's that, and the perfectionist in me is just going to have to sit in the corner and pout about it, stroppy cow.

“Sir?”

When no answer comes from the office, Hugh fidgets, swallowing and looking over his shoulder at the empty station. It’s late again – much later than he’d promised Dottie he’d be home – but even after weeks of the same, he still hates to leave. It makes him sad, leaving the Inspector to fall asleep at his desk night after night; looking for clues that aren’t there as to the whereabouts of a man who, it seems, can’t be caught. 

They’re all, frankly, getting more than a little concerned – and not just about the phantom arsonist.

“Sir?” he calls again, and when no answer comes, he reaches for the handle – if the Inspector’s asleep already he’ll just tidy up the files and remove any stewing teacups before he goes. As Hugh opens the door though, he blinks in surprise at what greets him. 

“Collins!” 

Hugh does a double take at the sight before him – at his superior leaning back in his chair with his bare feet propped up on his desk, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. 

Of all the things he’d expect to find the other side of the door, this is most assuredly not it.

“Collins, come in!” the other man exclaims, waving him over. “Come on, come on!”

Hugh hesitates, then steps inside the office, shutting the door carefully behind him. 

“Inspector?” he asks, mouth still somewhat agape. “Are you… are you alright, sir?”

He nods emphatically, grinning. “Absolutely, Collins – I’ve had an epiphany you see.”

“Oh, sir? What was that?”

“It’s about our dear arsonist,” the Inspector replies, swinging the bottle around as he gesticulates – he looks over to Hugh, then does a double take of his own, mouth falling open and eyes going wide. “Good god, Collins, what is that?”

Hugh startles, looking over his shoulder, then down at his own uniform. He can see nothing though – not a button undone or stitch out of place. 

“What’s what, sir?”

“Your – your head!”

Hugh blinks, worried. What’s wrong with his head?

“Did you always have two, Collins?”

Realisation dawns slowly, and Collins purses his lips – finding himself both dismayed and yet somewhat amused. “Er, no, sir – it’s just the one head, actually.”

“No,” Robinson disagrees, taking another swig. “You definitely have two.”

“I think that might just be the whiskey, sir,” Hugh murmurs under his breath, and the Inspector blinks up at him. 

“What was that, Collins?”

“Nothing, sir!” he replies. “Although don’t you think perhaps you should go home to bed – you really haven’t had much sleep lately and I’m sure that’s not helping with the… well with the…”

He trails off but the other man stares expectantly back at him. “With the what?”

“Well,” Hugh clears his throat. “Well with the whiskey, sir.”

The Inspector lets out a deep, rumbling laugh. “You are funny when you’re trying to be polite, Collins.”

Hugh doesn’t really know how to respond to that – or the _situation_ if he’s honest – so instead just stands awkwardly and stares at his superior, wondering exactly what the best course of action is here. He knows it’s been a difficult few months for him – it has for all of them – and they’d all desperately wanted the Inspector to be able to follow Miss Fisher as planned. This arsonist, though, had seemingly had other ideas. Hugh didn’t think it was necessarily fair – considering the number of stations and officers in the whole of Melbourne – that the Commissioner had cancelled all leave until the man was caught, but it had been far from his position to argue, and thus they were all as stuck with the situation as each other.

They’d borne it as best they could, his superior included, but clearly the frustrations of this particular game of cat and mouse have finally started to take their toll. It’s concerning, having to face that down across a darkened office (the shadows of which do a good job of painting what, on the surface, is a comedic scene with the darker strokes of heartache that sit somewhere behind the Inspector’s liquor-glazed expression) when this is so far from what Hugh is used to seeing from his mentor – but he has to admit, he understands. Completely. If anyone deserves a break, Hugh thinks, it’s Jack Robinson. The man just can’t quite seem to catch one.

The Inspector, for his part, doesn’t seem at all consciously phased by Hugh’s presence – two-headed or not – and soon returns to his whiskey in happy silence. After several moments of quiet, though, he lets out a heavy sigh, his feet coming down and his head replacing them, banging down onto the desk with a groan and falling into shadow. 

“I’m so alone, Collins.”

Hugh freezes somewhere between horror and hysteria – wondering if in fact it’s he who is drunk, or asleep, and if any of this is actually real. 

“I just want to catch this damn arsonist so I can follow her before she changes her mind, but I’m starting to think fate wants me to be alone. I don’t even _believe_ in fate, Collins.”

Hugh opens and closes his mouth several times – unsure if any input he has would be helpful, or even needed. He decides to try, at least. 

“You’re not alone, Inspector, you have all of us.”

“What, you and your heads?” he asks with a snort, and Hugh ignores the derision to take a step forward.

“No, sir, me and Dottie - and Mr. Butler, and Doctor MacMillan. Bert and Cec, even. We’re all still here.”

The Inspector remains silent then lifts his head a little to look at his desk from an inch or two higher. “Why won’t my desk stay still?” he asks, a furrow in his brow, completely ignoring Hugh’s reassurances.

Hugh sighs, unable to help the little smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. 

“It is still, sir.”

“Then my office is moving!” he exclaims. “Quick, Collins, do something!”

“I’m not sure there’s anything to stop it but a drink of water and a good night’s sleep. Sir,” he adds quickly at the end. Robinson might be far gone enough that he won’t call Hugh on sassing him, but he still isn’t about to stand here _totally_ disrespecting him.

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s probably the arsonist.” The Inspector springs to his feet, wobbling rather spectacularly before clambering up onto his desk. “We have to stop him!”

“Sir, I don’t think that’s – ”

But he’s too late – his superior officer has already stepped forward in apparent pursuit, his foot not finding any kind of purchase in the empty air he strides so confidently into, and he tumbles immediately, and with very little grace, to the floor. 

“Ow,” is his only comment at this new turn of events, and he rolls over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. 

Hugh kneels down beside him to check for any serious damage, startling when the Inspector reaches up to grab him firmly by the chin. 

“Follow her wherever she goes, Collins,” he tells him, eyes firm and suddenly far less hazy. “Your Dot. You follow her wherever she goes, for as long as you have the privilege of her wanting you to – promise me?”

Hugh stammers for a moment but then nods. “I promise, sir.”

He pats him on the cheek and smiles. “Good man.” His hand falls away again, eyes falling closed. “Even if you do have a secret second head.”

Hugh shakes his head, but smiles, standing to round the desk and reaching for the telephone. 

The Inspector might be too delirious to understand it now, but Hugh hadn’t been lying when he’d said he isn’t alone. It goes without saying, really, that they are all as fond of him as they are of his crime-solving counterpart. Miss Fisher, he thinks, knows it though would never presume it of any of them. His superior however, Hugh has suddenly realised, doesn’t seem to have the faintest clue. 

If that’s the case, though, he wonders if they shouldn’t do a little more to prove it. For now, he can do so by getting him home safely, but an idea starts to form in his mind for what else he can try to help his mentor out of this particular hole.

Bert and Cec seem deeply amused when they come to collect him, but Hugh is reassured of their own loyalty when they heave him up and into the cab far more gently than their joking suggests they might have, and telephone promptly to confirm when he’s been delivered safely to his bed.

Once home he discusses the idea briefly with Dot – who is predictably uncertain about the idea of meddling in their employers’ affairs – but, for once, Hugh feels certain.

He sends the telegram the next morning and, two months later – an arsonist still at large, but his superior officer delirious only with happiness at having a partner again to play this game of cat and mouse with – he’s confident he made the right choice.

And when, arsonist finally, _finally_ brought to justice, Miss Fisher climbs into her plane again - pouting about not getting to stop off in Jerusalem on her way back - the Inspector finally follows her.

“Take good care of my station, Collins,” he warns him with a smirk and a reassuring pat on the shoulder as they all say their goodbyes. “I expect everything to be just where I left it when I get back.”

Hugh swallows, nervous but determined, and nods. “You can count on me, sir.”

Robinson does smile at that. “I know I can, Collins – just make sure you don’t forget you can count on everyone else,” he adds with a knowing look. “You’re not alone, Collins.”

Hugh smiles back at that, nodding again, more confidently this time. “I know.”

The Inspector gives him one more gentle slap on the arm and then turns to the waiting plane. He turns back again as he reaches it though, pointing back at Hugh as he calls across the grass.

“Oh, and Collins?”

“Yes, sir?” he calls back.

“Stay off the whiskey.”

  



	4. Gunpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It starts, as so many things do between them, as something of a joke – a game they play to while away long nights waiting in the dark for murderers to reveal themselves. 
> 
> “If someone held you up at gunpoint,” Jack asks, “and asked you to choose between delivering a piece of intelligence that would have ended the war, and saving one man’s life in that moment, which would you choose?” 
> 
> Day 5 - Gunpoint. Teen and Up. (A) - ish. A bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this started off as a simple little style experiment which was actually going to be quite fluffy, spooked, took off down the track at silly miles-an-hour, and launched itself off into a philosophical one instead. I didn't mean to keep playing with 'what if'ing characterisation all over whumptober, but I keep doing it and I am _so_ sorry. Truly. 
> 
> **TRIGGER WARNING**, and there's no easy way to say this, but dead kids are involved in the plot. That's mainly what the (A) is for - nothing graphic or particularly detailed, though, but obviously please do proceed with (self)care and caution.

It starts, as so many things do between them, as something of a joke – a game they play to while away long nights waiting in the dark for murderers to reveal themselves.

“If someone held you up at gunpoint,” Jack asks, as they crouch behind bins in an alleyway when they've barely known each other long enough for _this_ to be how they're conducting their ‘get to know you’s (though how else, really, could it have gone?), “and asked you to choose between delivering a piece of intelligence that would have ended the war, and saving one man’s life in that moment, which would you choose?”

“Surely it's the man who's being held up at gunpoint in this scenario?” she shoots right back, but she is immediately, keenly intrigued.

It isn't the first time someone has ever asked her this kind of ‘either or’, but in the past it's usually been ‘would you give up fur or lace? lipstick or blush? jewellery or scarves?’ – the sorts of questions men who think they know women like to ask to seem clever and interested, that usually lead her to pointedly pay for her own drink and leave at the closest opportune moment to turn her attentions elsewhere.

This, Jack, is altogether different. The game in itself is the same, childish nonsense but the question is far from it. He poses a fascinating philosophical conundrum and the look in his eyes, as she raises a curious eyebrow at him in the dim light of the alley, says that he is just as intrigued to hear her answer as she is by the question.

“What would you choose?” she asks, coy, and he smirks.

“I asked you.”

The question launches them into a lengthy, almost heated debate, which only ends when the murderer they'd been waiting for finally shows her face (and if they had both forgotten, just momentarily, that they were there for any purpose other than philosophical bickering, neither cares to acknowledge it afterwards).

“I agree with you, by the way,” Jack tells her a week or so later when they coincide again, and Phryne frowns at the non sequitur.

“About the gunpoint question,” he clarifies.

She blinks in surprise.

“Then why did you disagree with me in the alley?”

“I was curious,” Jack shrugs, leaning back in his desk chair. “And I enjoy a healthy debate.”

Phryne narrows her eyes at him. “That's a dangerous game, Inspector.”

“True - but it helps to make the time go faster.”

And that, she can't disagree with.

It's not always philosophical – or even particularly deep. Sometimes they'll sit in a park watching for a face amongst faces and she will pipe up with something she knows is utterly ridiculous like ‘juggling flaming batons or lion taming’, or Jack will ask something simple like ‘Wordsworth or Keats’ (to which, of course, the answer comes as an eye roll, a chuckle from Jack, and ‘I’ll take the gun’).

Slowly, though, it starts to become more than either of those things. More than the catalyst for a thoughtful conversation or a series of silly questions for them to lovingly needle each other over.

It starts to become a grounding, a code, a way to break through the mists of doubt or fish each other out of indecision on the few occasions that logic and reason fail them.

They might be mid-chase and come to a crossroads, unsure which way to go.

“Gunpoint, Jack?” She will demand. “Docks or station?”

And like the trigger of the gun itself has been pulled, he’ll make the choice.

She might be torn in indecision between what her temper wants, and what she suspects she ought to do, and she will telephone just to hear that simple question.

“Gunpoint, Miss Fisher?”

And the choice becomes easier.

Sometimes they still use it over silly things, still keep the joking nature of the word alive.

_“Should I have toast or an omelette for breakfast this morning?”_

_“Should you be keeping the telephone line busy at a police station because you can't decide what you want for breakfast?”_

_“This is a very important dilemma, Jack, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It defines how the rest of my day will go.”_

_“You're right, how could I be so flippant?”_

_“Well then, toast or omelette?”_

_“Gunpoint, Miss Fisher?” _

_“Toast.”_

Most of the time, though, it's just something that's theirs. It's not something they think about or discuss in any greater detail than the conversations themselves, it's just a way through which they learn to better understand each other. A code that becomes unique to them in a way which – crouched together, semi-strangers, in an alley – neither of them might ever have predicted could become so intimate.

It’s for this reason – the unanticipated fondness with which Phryne holds the interaction – that the blow feels all the harder when the game, without any warning or preamble, finally becomes real.

*

The case has been long, wearying and fraught. No one’s quite sure why a madman has started running down children on their way home from school, but the very idea of it all makes Phryne feel sick, and the further the case goes on without any significant progress the worse it gets.

There is seemingly no logic in the attacks – no connections between the victims, no one particular location or institution being targeted. There is no constant in any of it save for the car that’s used – but even this has proved almost impossible to track down.

They have five dead children on their hands before they even have a clear rego, and the whole community is unspeakably on edge. The papers, parents, and entire police department seem to be on them to get to the bottom of the whole thing before one more life is lost.

Jack is tetchy, she is exhausted, and wherever they look for answers they come up empty. Their failure to prevent these killings, and the vitriol with which people have begun to berate them for it, starts to have Phryne feeling like she might as well be driving the car herself.

So, when she finally, _finally_, finds something that seems like an honest to goodness lead, Phryne pursues it. Jack is asleep (at his desk, propped up uncomfortably in his chair so that she has to resist the strange urge to find something to make him more comfortable, but neither of them have seen a proper bed in days) and she hasn’t the heart to wake him, so instead she pockets her pistol, double-checks for her lockpick, and sweeps out into the air of midnight with her heart pounding and fists clenched.

She will find this lunatic, and she will bring them to justice.

The pursuit takes the rest of the night and she crows in internal elation when she finally unravels the clues that lead her to believe she’s found the car’s hiding place. Phryne draws her gun and enters ready to catch a murderer – what she finds instead though, is Jack.

Staring back at her with a gun pressed against his temple.

“Beat you,” he greets, and the joking of the words doesn’t mask the tightness of fear in his eyes but she is grateful for it nevertheless. She uses everything she has to keep the hand holding her pistol steady.

“I wasn’t aware you were even in the race, Inspector.”

He smirks, but it is distinctly lacking in mirth, and it makes her stomach turn. “Well, if you will rush off in the middle of the night and leave evidence lying on my desk like breadcrumbs.”

Phryne can’t remember the short minutes between her personal eureka moment and tanking off in pursuit; she wonders, idly, if she had left the letter that sparked it there on purpose. If she had hoped he might follow. She has never needed back up, but she cannot deny that she welcomes Jack’s more than she might ever have thought she would.

“Enough chitchat, Miss Fisher.”

And her attention finally falls behind Jack’s shoulder, where a man she recognises – and not as the murderer she’d been expecting – stands with his hand in Jack’s collar and his fingers clenched, white around the gun at his head.

“Mr. Figgins, if you wanted to talk to us I assure you there are easier ways,” she tells the father of one of their victims, aiming for levity but falling just flat of it. Jack hears it, she can see that in his eyes. Figgins doesn’t.

“You like joking, don’t you, Miss Fisher? Like playing around at detective.”

Her jaw clenches.

“What do you want?”

“Justice.”

“We’re trying,” she tells him, and this is sincere. They have been trying, harder perhaps than on any case they’ve worked before.

“Not hard enough!” he exclaims, pressing the gun harder into Jack’s temple, and Phryne’s fingers tighten involuntarily at the wince it produces from him.

She is silent for a moment, assessing. Rage, she has handled many times. Jealousy, greed, shame. Phryne has talked people down from a whole tapestry of emotion in the past, but this is different. Delicate. Grief is so much more unpredictable, and she finds her tongue feels heavy in her mouth as she contemplates the best approach.

“I’m sorry,” she tries, finally, voice soft. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t save Harry.”

“Are you?” he asks, the words like acid. She by no means cares what this man, who in all other ways means nothing, thinks of her. He can think her a monster all he likes, but it doesn’t change the fact that she will never – _could_ never – take the death of an innocent lightly. His not believing it won’t remove the fact that news of Harry’s death – that they had failed a fifth time to stop this devastation in its violent tracks – had caused a screaming meltdown that had involved several broken glasses, furious tears, and Jack having to back away slowly for several hours until she had marched into his office and huffily demanded the comfort of his arms.

She cannot, and will not try, to make a grieving father understand all that. Right now, she knows, it’s all beside the point to him. He won’t care about her rage, or that she cried. He won’t care that she is more desperate than she has been in a very long time to find her perpetrator. All he can focus on, she knows (because she has stood in his shoes, has been the servant of cruel grief and knows the fierceness of her whims) is his pain.

“Yes,” she says, because all other words would be surplus. She can only hope that it’s enough.

But grief is unpredictable.

“I don’t believe you.”

The gun at Jack’s temple cocks and every muscle in her body contracts, heart thudding in her chest. She watches as Jack’s own jaw ticks with the tension, side-eyeing the gun then returning his gaze to her. She doesn’t want to examine what’s in it.

“We will stop this, Mr. Figgins – soon,” Phryne breathes, the words quiet but edged in a frosty filigree. “But I’ll need Inspector Robinson back to do so.”

“What so you can continue wasting time?” he demands. “Don’t think I don’t read the papers – everyone knows what’s going on. The two of you don’t care about our kids, you only care about each other, fucking pigs.”

He spits, and Phryne chokes down the very violent urge to lose her own temper. She is not made for this sort of hostage negotiation. She’ll talk anyone down from any ledge she finds them on but _this_? This is too much, too personal, and there is panic clawing at the edges of her carefully held calm.

“I assure you,” she tells him, and the frost has turned to ice, her words hard and resolute. “We do care.”

Figgins snarls, renewing the pressure of the gun on Jack’s skin. “Prove it, then.”

Phryne’s brows pull together inadvertently in confusion. “How so?”

“Prove it,” he says again, and his words carry an oddly cruel kind of mocking in their tone which she doesn’t quite understand. “Go and stop him.”

“Happily,” she deadpans. “Hand me the Inspector back, and we will.”

“No,” Figgins replies. “_You_ go, and he stays.”

She blinks. 

“What?”

His lips curl up around his teeth in an expression of wicked satisfaction. “I’m giving you a choice, Miss Fisher,” he explains. “Prove you care more about stopping this than you do about your own personal relations.”

There is a moment of absolute silence where she processes exactly what he’s saying, and she watches as Jack does, too. They seem to reach understanding in the same moment.

“You’re out of your mind,” she murmurs – and it’s involuntarily, but she can’t quite help it.

“No.” He shakes his head. “No, I’m just proving a point.”

“What _point?_” she exclaims, letting out a disbelieving and thoroughly unamused chuckle. “What does this prove – to anyone?”

“Your priorities,” he snarls. “Let everyone see you for who you are. Let everyone see you putting your own self-interests above the lives of our children.”

There is a moment, briefly, where white hot rage encompasses her entire being at these words. The sheer bloody nerve of this man making her fingers twitch for the trigger of her own gun, incandescently furious that he should presume to know her, to make assumptions about morality within her he hasn’t even the smallest notion about. The sight of his own weapon though, poised so neatly to break her heart, settles it instead into a cold, unforgiving wrath.

“Do not,” she begins, deathly quiet, “begin to assume you know me, Mr. Figgins, nor that you have the faintest _clue_ as to my priorities.”

She can feel Jack’s eyes on her, but she cannot focus on him, cannot look at him. If she looks, if she breaks concentration from her own anger now, then she cannot guarantee she will win this stalemate.

“Then prove me wrong,” Figgins replies with a shrug. “We watched the man come and take the car, the Inspector and I, whilst we waited for you. Even heard where he was going, didn’t we, Robinson? He’s going to kill again now, soon, so if you care then go and find a way to stop him – and leave the Inspector to me.”

She doesn’t move. “And what do you plan to do with him if I go?”

“I’m going to shoot him,” he says – so simply, so casually, as if the words aren’t meant to fill her with absolute terror. “It’s your choice, Miss Fisher. You can stand here arguing for his life – or you can take my information and go and save an innocent child.”

She feels her own jaw fall open without any conscious knowledge of allowing it to do so, her fingers faltering momentarily where they hold her own gun.

This is ridiculous. Impossible. She has seen grief twist souls to all kinds of deeds but this is… she cannot even begin to understand it. What’s worse, however, is the slowly dawning sense of irony as she stares him down.

After all, how many times have she and Jack joked of this?

_“If someone held you up at gunpoint…”_

The whole thing feels all the worse because of the way it violates something that had been so sacred between them; their own little nonsense meant only for them.

They’ve said it so many times, with so many different questions attached, that she couldn’t even recall them all if asked – but this one, this one is sharply, painfully familiar. After all, is it not the very first question Jack asked her?

_“If someone held you up at gunpoint and asked you to choose between delivering a piece of intelligence that would have ended the war, and saving one man’s life in that moment, which would you choose?”_

It’s not the same, not exactly, but it might as well be. The idea remains; one life now or lives later, should she miss the opportunity to catch their perpetrator now they know where he’ll be.

The problem is it’s not just _a_ life. It’s Jack’s life.

In all the times they’ve played this, the questions ridiculous or philosophical, they have never once gambled with each other’s lives at stake. Now, she realises why that is.

The idea is unthinkable.

“Phryne,” Jack’s voice breaks through her spiralling, the first he’s spoken in so many long minutes. “It’s alright.”

Her eyes snap to his and she shakes her head minutely. “No, Jack.”

He nods though and attempts a smile. “You know the answer, you told me.”

Her head shakes again, more violently this time. “What if I was wrong?” she asks, because she has to be – doesn’t she? Removed from its theoretical context the question takes on new meaning. Of course she’d end the war, who wouldn’t, when they had lived the horrors of it? But then the man had been hypothetical, and sacrificing him had been easy (after all, he could be anyone, Jack had never specified – and oh, how Phryne loves to make things her own, to play by her own rulebook – and in her head she’d made the man an evil of himself to win on every count). The situation appears quite painfully unwinnable in practice. “What if I want to change my answer?”

She isn’t playing by her rulebook anymore, she’s being forced to play by someone else’s, and she cannot make the man into anyone other than who he is.

“You can’t.”

Momentarily, she is outrageously angry at him. How can he be so calm, so collected – how can he stand there with so little resistance and act as if she should be able to smile and laugh and agree, as if agreement isn’t his death sentence?

Then he speaks again.

“Gunpoint, Phryne?” he asks, voice soft, and she trembles in anticipation of the other end of the question. Then, “Wordsworth or Keats?”

And the swirling doubt stops, the choice suddenly obvious.

Of course, she can play by her own rulebook – she has merely let her own panic get the better of her. Jack’s question has stilled it though, a code, fishing her out of indecision.

“Wordsworth or Keats?” she asks him, and knows he’ll understand she’s checking. She won’t do this if he isn’t sure, but he’s right that it’s the obvious solution. “Is that the best you can do?”

Figgins frowns, clearly lost. “What does this have to do with – ”

Jack nods.

_“I’ll take the gun.”_

Phryne shoots.

*

“Miss, have you seen the papers?”

Phryne raises an eyebrow at the folds of neat black typeface that Dot extends in her direction and gives a simple shake of her heard.

“No, Dot, thank you. I’d rather not.”

“It’s not bad, miss,” Dot says with a reassuring smile. “They’re saying you’re a hero.”

Phryne returns to picking at her omelette with a fork, though she finds she doesn’t have that much appetite. “Yes, today I’m a hero,” she tells her with a tight smile. “Last week I was no better than a child murderer, today I’m a hero. Next week I expect I’ll be a nice little article on the Spring Flower Festival.”

Dot’s smile falls and she bites her lip. “Sorry, miss, I’ll… I’ll take it away.”

Phryne manages to hold her grateful smile for as long as it takes for Dot to retreat to the kitchen, then lets her shoulders drop and pushes away her plate.

She sits, staring at it accusingly, until she’s disturbed again by Mr. Butler at the door.

“The Inspector to see you, miss.”

She straightens up in her chair, heart launching itself halfway up her throat.

He looks tired, but he still eyes her abandoned eggs with a small smirk.

“Should have gone for toast.”

“When will I learn?” she shoots back, and then silence descends again. Her eyes fall briefly to the sling cradling his arm, and then return to his face. He’s watching her carefully, expression more guarded than she’s used to seeing, but she understands.

It feels as if something has been ripped away from between them, and she feels unsure where they stand without it.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and it’s awkward and out of context so she stumbles over her own explanation. “About the arm, that is, I’m… I’m sorry about your arm, Jack.”

Jack blinks in obvious confusion at her apology, looking to the sling and back. “It’ll heal.”

She nods, because she doesn’t know what else she can say. It had worked, after all, and it wasn’t life threatening – not for Jack.

Whether Figgins will recover remains to be seen – but whether she’s killed a man is something that she can’t even begin to dwell on yet.

As if reading it in her though, Jack speaks. “Last I spoke to Mac she said there’s a good chance he’ll pull through.”

Phryne nods at this but doesn’t look at him. She hears him round the table and pull out a chair beside her.

“Phryne?”

She looks at him, and his expression is kind, if concerned.

“It’s over,” he tells her, voice soft. “We won.”

“Then why does it feel like we lost?” She turns to face him, words sharper than she means them to be. It’s not directed at him, her anger, but she finds she can’t subdue it.

Nothing about this resolution feels satisfying. Yes, they caught a murderer – but not before he’d racked up a devastating death toll. She’d saved Jack’s life too, but gravely wounded a man whose only crime was grief in the process.

None of this feels even remotely like victory.

“Because sometimes that’s just how it goes.”

The lack of comfort in the words almost shocks her – but then this is Jack, not Dot, and he’s not one to sugar-coat harsh truths for the sake of it. He knows her better than to try. This, strangely, of all things, comforts her.

Whatever else has been violated between them by these events – Jack still knows her. He is still Jack and she is still Phryne.

“Thank you,” she says then, because she realises she hasn’t.

“For what?”

Her mouth pulls up a little at the corners. “Wordsworth or Keats.”

Jack smiles too, inclining his head. “Oh, I was acting purely out of self-interest.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” she shoots back.

They’re silent for a moment, watching each other, and then Phryne asks the question that’s bothering her (foolish and unimportant as it is in the scheme of things, yet it clatters around her mind in a way she doesn’t have the energy, nor inclination, to silence), watching his reactions carefully.

“If someone held you up at gunpoint, Jack,” she asks, and she watches the surprise mix with amusement in his eyes at her boldness for going here, for phrasing it so, “and asked you to choose between what was right and what was easy, what would you choose?”

Jack considers for a moment, eyes never leaving her face. “I would tell them that things are rarely so clear cut,” he replies. “And then take my chances.”

She nods, contemplating.

“Do you think I would have let it happen?” she asks then, and the words are pained, tortured – because she doesn’t know the answer herself and it’s agonising. “Do you think I would have saved you at the expense of a child?”

Jack shakes his head.

“You think I’d let you die?” the words come out offended, and she knows it’s ridiculous because she doesn’t want the alternative either; but a strange, sadistic part of her brain needs to know what the choice would have been, had she made it.

“No,” Jack shakes his head again, equally as emphatic.

“Then what?” she breathes, staring at him.

“I think you’d have found a way to save us both, no matter what. All I did was speed along the process, but you’d have done it, you always do.”

“What if I hadn’t?” she insists. “What if I couldn’t?”

He reaches out and takes her hand in his free one, holding her fingers between his with a firm but gentle pressure. “Then it wouldn’t be your fault.”

She takes a breath, letting the words sink in. She knows it’s true, of course she does (she’s Phryne Fisher, not Atlas, and she knows in practice that the weight of the world is not hers alone to bear) but the echoes of trauma past whisper differently. She is haunted by a seemingly never-ending trail of ‘what ifs’, an eternity of faces she might have saved – murder victims, soldiers, Janey. Sometimes, when it’s late and she has indulged in one nightcap too many – her optimism bidding her goodnight and slipping under the covers of cynicism – she wonders if the reason she dances so stubbornly and unapologetically forward through life is that if she stopped to truly look at what she’d danced past the weight of it all would cripple her.

But Jack is right, and logically she knows this.

It’s not her fault.

Still, it irks her beyond measure that the answer she had given with so much confidence once upon a time – bent behind a line of bins arguing philosophy in a darkened street – had, in practice, not been the clear cut choice she had argued at such length that it should be.

It feels dangerously close to being wrong.

“The question was only ever meant to be theoretical, Miss Fisher,” Jack points out, as if he knows. “It was only ever meant to be a game.”

“It wasn’t though, was it?” she asks, eyes locked with his, needing to know that he feels as unbalanced by this whole thing as she does. That he is reeling from this just as much as she is.

“No,” he admits, a quiet breath. “No, it wasn’t.”

She nods and turns her hand in his, lacing their fingers together in response, eyes falling to where they rest on his lap. She examines their entwined hands for long minutes, relishing the feel of his skin, the dull thud of his pulse, the knowledge that – even if it doesn’t, and probably never will quite feel like one – this _is_ a victory. They may be down, but they remain undefeated.

“If someone held you up at gunpoint,” she starts again, eyes still fixed on their joined fingers, “and asked you to choose between staying in the firing line but doing what we do best – us, together – and never facing gunpoint again, what would you choose?”

Jack squeezes her hand, and she looks up to meet his eye – his gaze is warm and certain, and with it the intimacy that she had felt stripped from them floods back, familiar and reassuring.

“Gunpoint,” he says with a soft smile. “I choose gunpoint.”

“It’s a dangerous game, Inspector,” she warns, though the words are equally soft and oddly relieved.

“True - but it helps to make the time go faster.”

And that, she can't disagree with.


	5. Dragged Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly just a silly little drabble about shortbread and grief, and that's about all the summary I have for this one.
> 
> G

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I flirted heavily with three completely different iterations of this prompt, all of which made it to between 800 and 2000 words before I decided I hated two of them immensely and neither should ever see the light of day, and one of which stuck up its middle finger and became a different prompt entirely. So instead of any of those, in the interests of getting _something_ done for this prompt, I whacked this out instead. I cannot in any way, shape, or form, reconcile how it would work date/timeline wise, but I thought it was stupid and cute and I wanted to write it, so I'm just going to call it AU and have done with it.

“We should go,” her mother says, and Phryne tears her gaze away from the nice police officer who's been feeding her biscuits. As much as she’d really rather not leave just yet, she knows that it's simply not worth the argument.

She could be difficult about it, of course, dig in her heels and launch it into a tug of war for control – but her mother will just get frustrated enough with that the tension will build in her until it escapes as tears, and once she's started crying Phryne knows she won't stop again for several hours.

She _could_, were she feeling particularly cantankerous, launch into a tantrum of truly volcanic proportions the like of which, until this last week, she hasn't done since she’d just learnt the excitement of walking. This, though, is a tactic she's sure will not work repeatedly, or at least not too often – given her not being just past the age of crawling anymore – and thus she doesn't think it's worth wasting it over a kind smile and a few pieces of shortbread, pleasant as they may be.

“Phryne!” Her mother calls, and this time there's more purpose in it, marching over and taking her by the hand to haul her from where she's perched herself atop the wooden desk with her hand inside the tin, poised ready to take another biscuit. “Manners!” she snaps, “I'm sure this lovely officer didn't mean for you to stuff yourself on his shortbread. Polite young girls take one and leave it at that.”

“I'm not a polite young girl though, mother, I'm a hungry young girl,” Phryne counters. “Besides which I'd rather not be a young girl at all, I'd much rather be something altogether more interesting like a pirate queen or a bull fighter.”

Her mother sighs and the officer chuckles. As he does, she finally takes the time to make note of his face with a little more scrutiny – too distracted as she’s been by the contents of the biscuit tin to really pay attention. There are lines there that say he's likely closer to retirement than the academy, even if he's still a few years off it yet. Most prominent of them all are the creases around his eyes – smile lines, she's heard them called, and this seems accurate for the demeanour he carries himself with – but there's something weary behind the kindness in his eyes. Given what he's had to sit through today she can understand why it's there.

She's no idea how common this sort of thing is, but she can't imagine it's much fun watching mothers weep for their lost children with any kind of regularity.

Phryne is certainly finding it tiring, and she hasn't even had to listen to most of it – shut in her room, away from the ‘adult’ talk - as if she doesn't know that her sister is dead.

She's cried about it, too, but she's at least had the decency to do it into her pillow so no one else has to hear it. One grief is enough, she has decided, she has no desire whatsoever to shoulder someone else's.

She wonders how this man – with his smile lines and his kind eyes and his tin of delicious shortbread – manages to do it for a living. It takes something she's not sure that she has, but strangely, she finds herself almost jealous of it.

“Don't be ridiculous.” Ironically, her mother and Janey had always been the patient ones – patience now seems to have been stolen from them as a family in one fell swoop. “Now, thank Sergeant Robinson for the biscuits and let's not waste any more of his time.”

Phryne looks from her mother to the policeman and back again then, quite deliberately holding her gaze, she sticks her hand back in and scoops out another stick of shortbread, stuffing it in her mouth before turning back to the man.

“Fanks,” she mumbles around the mouthful of crumbs, and hears her mother let out a huff that'll probably lead to a sharp tongue-lashing the minute they're home again – but it feels worth it in the moment.

“For goodness’ sake, Phryne!” she exclaims, and grabs her by the arm. “I'm so sorry, Sergeant, really I don't know what's come over her. I'll replace the biscuits.”

He waves her off with a smile. “Oh nonsense, don't apologise! My wife makes enough to feed the whole Victoria Police Force most weeks – they're my son’s favourite, boy eats them like he's marching off to war tomorrow, believe me.”

He shoots Phryne a reassuring smile and she decides, instantly, that she does in fact rather like this man. Not a bad fellow at all – for a copper, at least.

Her mother gives him a tight smile. “Well thank you, Sergeant – but we shan't waste more of your time.” She glances quickly at Phryne and then lowers her voice. Ridiculously, if you were to ask Phryne, considering she's not a baby and she also has _ears._

“You'll let me know, won't you, if you find anything?”

The Sergeant reaches out and gives her a reassuring pat on the arm, smile small but still kind. “Of course, Mrs. Fisher. You'll be the first to hear.”

Phryne doesn't know why her mother is bothering. They all know the truth, deep down, even if they don't want to admit it to themselves. She looks up to meet the man’s eyes, and as kind as they may be, she sees the truth in them.

She shares it with him for a long moment until her mother’s hand tightens around her arm and drags her away towards the door.

She looks back one last time before they disappear out of it, though, giving him a small wave. He waves back and, for the first time in a week that has felt a year long, Phryne smiles. 

*

“Jack?”

Her voice disturbs him from the swirling emotions in his head, and he turns to look over his shoulder to where she stands, half a step behind, waiting patiently.

“Are you alright?” she asks, and he sniffs, nods, and gives her a tight smile that he knows is more of a grimace.

“I'm fine.” He reaches for her and her hands are instantly around the one he has extended, squeezing tightly as she accepts the permission to re-enter his space, stepping up and placing a soft kiss on his shoulder.

“You know it's alright if you're not, Jack.” Her voice is gentle, perhaps more so than he's ever heard her use – except maybe with Jane – and it's a strange reminder that this, in particular, is her oldest trauma. This is the deepest well of empathy she carries - after all, there is nothing Phryne understands more than the loss of family, the keenness of the grief that comes with losing the little part of you they take with them.

“I'm not alright right now,” he admits, because he trusts her and he can, because he knows she understands. “But I will be, in a moment or two.”

She squeezes his hand again. “Take as many moments as you need, I'll be here – or not, if you'd rather be alone?”

He shakes his head. There's nothing he wants less, frankly.

They're silent for several moments, Jack’s eyes skimming the words on the gravestone over and over, trying to drink them in, process them, make them real.

“He'd have liked you,” he says then, the thought hitting him quite out of nowhere, but somehow needing to be voiced. “He always had a soft spot for troublemakers.”

He senses rather than sees her grin, but takes comfort in the fact that it's there – that once he has processed this all enough to be done with this melancholia, her smile will be there to remind him that even in the face of death itself, joy still exists.

“I wish I’d met him,” she murmurs. “Who knows, I might even have preferred Robinson the elder,” she adds with the slightest hint of teasing, just enough to remind him, to softly begin the process of needling him back from his grief again.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” Jack agrees, deadpan. “He was much more generous with his biscuit stash than I am.”

Phryne says nothing in response to this and Jack turns back to look at her with a small frown between his brows. Her face has taken on a slightly distant expression, as if she is suddenly miles away, remembering something.

“Phryne?” he asks, and she shakes off whatever thought she'd been lost in. She smiles.

“It's not difficult to be more generous with biscuits than you are, Jack,” she complains, “but I suppose I'll have to make do with Robinson the younger regardless.”

Jack almost laughs at this, shaking his head. He glances to the grave and back to her, letting out a long breath.

“Do you think your Aunt will mind if we don't go to her soirée this evening? I'm not sure I can bear to make small talk right now.”

Phryne inclines her head. “There'll almost certainly be threats of bodily harm, or worse,” she begins, “but that's only because she needs to keep up appearances.” One of her hands raises from his fingers to stroke up his arm. “She is a lot of things, my aunt, but she understands loss maybe even more than I do. She'll complain, but she'll understand.”

He lets out a relieved sigh and nods.

“Home, then?”

“Home,” she echoes. “I’m sure Mr. Butler could be persuaded to provide dinner upstairs.”

“I’m not sure I could stomach it even if he did, honestly.”

Phryne blinks at him, concern evident in her face. She doesn’t respond immediately though, instead considering for a moment, a whole host of things seemingly playing out behind her blue eyes.

“Something light then?” she suggests, and her voice is just at that pitch where he knows she’s up to something, but he has neither the will nor the energy to investigate further, and so he merely agrees, and allows her to drag him away from his father’s grave with a gentle pressure of fingers around his.

It’s only an hour or so later, when Mr. Butler interrupts them for long enough to place a tray of tea and warm shortbread in front of him, that Jack suspects where the expression came from. Not that he understands how on earth she knows.

He raises an eyebrow at her, curiosity eclipsing grief for just a moment, and she simply shrugs. “I thought you could put them in your biscuit tin – if you don’t eat them all now that is,” she smirks, reaching over to fish a piece off the tray.

He finds he is speechless, though the question he would ask is obvious – because for all her subterfuge and sleuthing, the fact that shortbread is so neatly linked in his mind with the loss he has just suffered seems an impossible secret for even her to unearth.

Phryne, however, seems uninclined to elaborate – merely settling deeper into the cushions of the chaise and returning to her book.

“I did like him,” she says, after several more minutes have passed, and Jack has finally managed to come around enough to snag himself a biscuit of his own. “Your father. I liked him a lot, Jack, as it happens.”

He doesn’t know what has fallen into place in her mind, or what he’s missed that the pieces were even there to fall to start with - he’s not sure he could even process it now, whatever it is, so that conversation will have to wait anyway. He looks from Phryne to his plate and back again, though - intrigued, amused, grieved - and for the first time in a week that has felt a year long, Jack smiles. 


	6. Shackled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Say I were looking to get a divorce,” Phryne says, quite out of nowhere, one Friday night in spring, and Jack can't help but blink in surprise at the question.
> 
> “I'd say I wish you'd have mentioned you were married at some point before I moved in.” 
> 
> G

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My brain has just decided to be a little shit this year and take none of these damn prompts literally. I mean on the one hand, i'm still having fun, on the other... I think I'm going to need to bash someone over the head soon because this is all getting far too emotionally whumpy and I don't think I've even involved any blood so far this year. Maybe tomorrow I'll go back to good old fashioned violence... maybe...
> 
> Anyway, if you're a big Hottie lover then, erm, back away slowly? If you're like me and enjoy them well enough but sense some, shall we say, _issues_, then you might forgive me. If you're _someone_ I know, then you're welcome.

“Say I were looking to get a divorce,” Phryne says, quite out of nowhere, one Friday night in spring, and Jack can't help but blink in surprise at the question.

“I'd say I wish you'd have mentioned you were married at some point before I moved in.”

She rolls her eyes at this, but sits up straighter, turning her head to face him. “It's not for me, _obviously_.”

Jack straightens himself, placing his book to one side and eyeing her with suspicion. “Might one inquire who it would be for then, in that case?”

Phryne hesitates, eyeing the shut parlour door before letting her gaze drift back to him. “Let’s just say it’s for a friend.”

“A friend, hmm?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Anyone I know?”

She tilts her head, as if considering the question, but her eyes tell him everything he needs to know.

It’s not so much of a mystery who she might be talking about, after all.

“I’d certainly say you know of them,” she replies, and he nods slowly.

“Well then.” He leans forward, latching his fingers together so that he can rest his chin on them, elbows on his knees. “To start with, I’d ask if they’d considered every avenue carefully before they choose that road – marriage isn’t something to be thrown away lightly.”

Phryne sits up herself, swinging her legs over the side of the chaise to face him fully. Her voice rises a semi-tone to that far too innocent pitch of hers. “And if, hypothetically, they themselves weren’t aware that they needed one?”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Then I’d say that might be the best place to start.”

“What if they’d never consider the possibility?” she asks, insistent. “But you know it would be the best thing for them.”

Jack sighs, long and hard. She’s right, she’s absolutely right – the whole relationship has soured slowly over the years in a way that’s been difficult for all of them to watch – but he very much doubts the idea of divorce has ever even occurred to either party.

Catholics don’t get divorced, after all.

On this topic he fully understands her desire to interfere – would endorse it himself if he felt that it might do any good. He knows from experience, though, that when it comes to these affairs the choice has to come from within. Whatever the two of them – or Jane or Mr. Butler, Cec or Bert, hell, even Prudence – do, it cannot make this choice for them.

“There are some things which, sadly, are not in our control to fix, my love,” he tells her softly, “no matter how much we might want to.”

Phryne’s shoulders sag slightly, gaze drifting to the carpet. “I know, I know… I just don’t know how else to help.”

“There are plenty of ways we can – and do,” he adds, because it’s not like Phryne hasn’t done more than her fair share of trying to resolve Dot and Hugh’s marital problems, despite her somewhat limited knowledge in the field.

“I just hate seeing them like this,” she admits. “You and Rosie managed to keep things so civil, in spite of everything – you even still _like_ each other, when it comes down to it – and I’m… Jack, I’m worried that before long we might not even be able to salvage that for them.”

He hums in agreement. “It’s possible.”

“That we can salvage it?”

“That we can’t.”

Phryne huffs, collapsing backwards again and letting her head fall back in frustration. She’s silent for several long minutes and then she looks up again.

“Why don’t you have a word with Hugh?” she asks, with the subtlest flutter of her eyelashes which he sees right through and immediately shakes his head at, if fondly.

“And say what – ‘I can see you’re a bit tired of being shackled to Dorothy, here’s my solicitor’s address’?”

“Well maybe approach it a little more subtly than _that_, darling.”

He laughs, and leans back himself, rubbing a hand over his face as he truly considers the situation. He does understand her desire to interfere – of course he does – there is nothing worse than watching people you love suffer, than watching people once so in love fall out of it. He knows better than she does how it hurts because he has experienced it from the inside.

Still, he’s not lying when he says he’s not sure there’s anything they can do to fix it.

He knows that their friends loved each other once, truly, but he’s also watched with the same sadness as he knows Phryne has as it’s become clear how ill-suited they are to being _married_ to each other. Each day that passes takes them further away from the people they were when they first started courting, and more incompatible with it – but he also doubts either of them would ever dream of mentioning it. They are both too sturdy, too loyal, (too loyally Catholic, too, at least in Dot’s case).

Neither of them would ever dare to say that what they want is no longer each other.

So instead they bicker, argue, shout. Hugh works and Dot works and more days than not Mr. Butler ends up trailing around after the children because the both of them are too stubborn to give in on their own desires and give any ground to the other.

He has tried to give Hugh afternoons off when he knows Phryne might particularly want Dot to go with her somewhere. Phryne has offered similarly when she knows Hugh has work engagements. She even offered to pay for more help, once, though the mortification on Dot’s face at the suggestion had shut the idea down again quickly enough.

There is no solution, he thinks, until the children are old enough to not need constant attention – but by that time he fears, just as he knows Phryne does, that there will be no love left to save.

Divorce, she’s right, would probably be the kinder option for all involved.

It won’t happen, though, much as Phryne might want it to, and they all might need to prepare themselves for what that means.

“Jack?” Phryne asks, and he realises he’s quite lost himself in thought on the matter. He shakes it off, looking back at her with a smile he tries to make reassuring, though he knows there’s not really all that much to be reassuring about.

“I think we might just have to wait and see what happens,” he offers, voice soft, and she gives a grim smile in return.

“I suppose you’re right.”

He opens his mouth but she holds up a finger before he can even get there. “On this _one_ occasion, Jack, don’t get cocky.”

He smirks, saying it with his face anyway, and they settle back into silence.

“There’ll be casualties,” she whispers, after several more minutes, the words soft and so sad it stirs him to his feet, moving across to sit beside her and take her hand.

Jack looks at her, waiting for her to meet his gaze before he answers. “Yes,” he tells her truthfully. “Yes, there’ll be casualties – but we will survive them, we all will.”

She takes a deep breath, nodding, and he pulls her into his side, dropping a kiss to her hair. He knows how much the thought upsets her – how much she silently values every member of their odd little family and how much the idea of it collapsing in on itself disturbs her. This conflict, no matter how indirectly they might actually be involved, touches little nerves of loss he knows are still tender.

She will continue to interfere, he knows she will, because it’s in her nature to help at whatever cost. It’s one of the things he loves about her, even if sometimes he wishes that she wouldn’t – for her own sake, if nothing else.

“You will try to talk to Hugh, won’t you?” she asks, no flirtation this time, just simple hope.

He squeezes where his arm sits around her shoulders. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you.”

“They’ll be okay, Phryne,” he tells her, because she won’t ask, but he knows she needs to hear it. “Whatever happens they’ll come through it one way or another, and the rest of us will too.”

Phryne says nothing, but shifts in closer to him.

“You’d divorce me if we needed to, wouldn’t you?” she asks finally, and he can’t help smirking at it.

“We’re not married, Phryne.”

“You know what I mean.”

He does, of course he does. “Yes,” he replies, sincere and honest.

“Good,” she sighs.

“But since we’re not shackled it would be a good deal easier to get shot of each other if we wanted to,” he adds, aiming for levity, but she turns to look up at him, face deadly serious.

“I don’t think it would be easier at all, Jack.”

Not for the first time (by more of a long shot than his ego might like to admit) in their acquaintance, Jack finds himself almost breathless at the intensity he suddenly finds in her gaze.

“No?” he asks, and the words are nothing more than a quiet hum.

“Shackles come in more shapes and sizes than Darby’s and wedding rings,” she whispers, and Jack feels himself frown. That isn’t necessarily the most optimistic assessment, after all.

“Do you _feel_ shackled?” he asks and finds himself suddenly tense to hear the answer. They’ve been so careful, so cautious in the way they have gone about this so that neither one of them has had to yield any more ground than they wanted, so that this house they’ve built is sturdy and lasting. If Phryne feels shackled then it means that, somewhere, they missed a brick, and the thought sits heavily on his chest.

She clearly sees that though, the uncertainty rising behind his eyes, because she reaches up to press a soft kiss against his mouth, hand moving to his cheek. “No, Jack – not in any sort of way I feel uncomfortable with… or otherwise wouldn’t mind repeating whenever you felt so inclined,” she adds, voice turning dark, and he raises an eyebrow.

“Unfortunately, my handcuffs are at the station, Miss Fisher.”

“Pity,” she smirks, then settles herself back against his shoulder. “I’d tell you if I weren’t happy, Jack,” she adds a moment later, and he realises as she says it just how much he’d needed to hear it.

Perhaps this issue with Dot and Hugh really is affecting him just as much as her.

“So would I,” he assures, and lets himself be assured with it. He and Phryne have the privilege of experience on their side, after all. Dot and Hugh do not.

“I wish I could fix it,” Phryne says then, and he knows she’s back on their friends again.

“I know.”

They all do, after all.

Some things, though, are just not in their control to fix.


	7. Stitches (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little Mac and Jack friendship piece, no shortbread, some grief.
> 
> Teen and Up. (A)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, friends, the time has come. It's 2019's first two whump-parter. Only it's a new year and the stakes are higher and the whumps are whumpier so I decided to try something slightly different. The situation is thus - this is a whole story, standalone, rather than a half of one. You can read it as that, and leave it as that, depending on how you feel at the ending. Should you decide to read it as a standalone, then the (A) applies. Should you decide you don't want it to be a standalone, well, it's not going to be. Although, the (A) might still apply... you'll have to see...
> 
> Also I finally spilled some blood this year! Yay! _(Is that a yay moment? Should I be concerned it feels like a yay moment? Does anyone have the number of a good therapist??)_

“That,” Mac says as she opens her front door and takes in the sight in front of her, impressively bloody as it is, “is definitely going to scar.”

“I was worried you’d say that,” Jack responds with a grimace, and Mac smirks, stepping to one side and throwing out an arm.

“Well then, don’t just stand there bleeding, Inspector – come in, let’s take a look at it.”

Jack shoots her a grateful smile, cradling the offending arm as best as he can in an apparent attempt to stop dripping blood in her front hall.

Mac’s not sure why he bothers, honestly – there’s a reason she opted for a tiled entryway, after all.

“Kitchen,” she tells him, and watches as he ventures in front of her, wondering at how a man capable of so much confidence, so much authority, manages to walk with apology in his gait like a scolded child when injured.

At least he’s aware of the trouble he’ll be in.

Jack removes his coat, draping it over the back of the chair and taking a seat with a practice that, should she dwell on it, might truly start to concern her.

She walks to the cupboard and pulls out her various instruments, as well as the largest bottle of iodine she can find, and then places them out on the table, taking a seat opposite him and reaching for his injured arm.

“Do I even want to know how you came by this one?” she asks as she cuts away the tattered ruins of his shirt sleeve to expose the wounds. “Or are we just chalking it down as another ‘injured in the line of duty’, hmm?”

Jack fidgets, clearing his throat but saying nothing.

“I’ll make note on the case for your bravery award, then,” she quips. “Tell me do you think Russell Street would like to know the exact measure of blood you’ve lost in pints, or fluid ounces?”

She places his arm outstretched on the table, reaching for the iodine and setting to work cleaning the deep gashes which litter his skin.

“You’re right,” she addresses his silence, “it’s none of my business, really. Besides, I’m a medical examiner so I’m quite capable of making observations without my patients being particularly communicative.”

She lifts the arm she’s cleaning to squint at one of the deeper wounds in a thoroughly over-egged assessment. “Clean lines,” she remarks, “no jagged edges, so no serrations on the blade. Sharp, though, it’s sliced through you like butter. No obvious debris or dirt so it was at least moderately clean – that’s a bonus for living victims, certainly – although what invisible evils it might have been carrying, who knows. Iodine’s a wonderful antiseptic but it’s no guarantee it _won’t_ get infected, there’s always the possibili– ”

“Alright,” Jack says with a sigh, holding up his uninjured hand to quiet her. “Alright.”

Mac shoots him a look of satisfied victory and places his arm down again, eyeing him expectantly.

“There was a… a little gang turf war happening down by the docks.”

She says nothing, waiting.

“I received a telephone call about it from the dockmaster, I went to go and mediate, that’s all.”

She nods, slowly, as if contemplating this information. “And did you take any back up with you?”

Jack licks his lips, evidently uncomfortable.

“Right.” Mac lets out a little laugh that is neither amused nor surprised, and stands, starting to pack up her things again – feeling only mildly satisfied when this reaction provokes at least some surprise from Jack.

“What are you doing?” he asks, and she finally allows her temper to flare.

“I’m giving up,” she declares, furious. “If you’re going to continue to refuse to look after yourself, Jack, then I’m going to refuse to patch you up afterwards. Friends respect each other – _you_ are not respecting me. You’re not respecting any of us.”

“I –” Jack starts, then falters, hanging his head. “You’re right,” he breathes. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you know how worried we all are about you?” she ploughs on, not hearing him. “How worried I’ve been and Hugh’s been and _Jane_, God, Jack, Jane’s just been beside herself – and you know it, don’t pretend like you don’t, that’s why you sneak over here to get stitched up and pray that nothing will scar so she won’t have to see them.”

“You’re right,” Jack repeats, louder this time, and Mac turns to acknowledge it. “I’m sorry, Mac.”

“Are you?” she asks, eyes narrowing, because sometimes she wonders. Sometimes she wonders if he is sorry, or if he’s too far gone to care.

“Yes,” he insists, shrugging his shoulders in something that’s sadly close to helplessness. “Of course I am, I just… I don’t…” he trails off, shaking his head and letting his gaze fall to the floor.

Mac sighs, leaning back against her china cabinet and taking several deep breaths before speaking again. When she does, the anger is gone from her voice again, falling away and leaving nothing but the grief that lies beneath it, that lies beneath all their anger.

“I miss her, too, Jack.”

She watches the words hit him, the pain that flashes across his face, and wonders idly if he’d shown nearly as much at the knife wounds on his arm. She can empathise, at least.

“She wouldn’t want this,” the words are quiet but certain, firm. “Not for you, not for any of us.”

“How can we know what she'd want, Mac?” Jack asks, bitterness seeping into his voice, looking back up to meet her gaze – and the look in his eyes makes her wonder if maybe he really _is_ too far gone to care. “She's gone.”

She wishes she had something for him in response to that, a witty comment or a kind reassurance; she wishes she had one for herself. There is nothing to say though, there is no bandage she has that can ever cover this wound, no antiseptic solution that will wash out the infection that has taken root.

Phryne's loss has festered in all of them, and Mac has no cure.

What she can treat, though, and _will_ despite everything that stands in her way – her own grief, the others’, the echoing emptiness that has hollowed their circle in a way she knows they likely will never refill – is Jack’s wounds.

Mac sighs, sitting down again and pulling his arm back towards her across the table, wordlessly.

She watches him open and close his mouth several times from the corner of her eye as she stitches him up (slowly, diligently, because these are wounds she can keep clean and ensure heal), though he never quite seems to manage to say anything.

Only once she's finished, clearing her things away to the sink to deal with later – much later, maybe after a whiskey or two so she doesn't feel so alone focusing on the blood she is all but helpless to stop him sacrificing – does he speak.

“Thank you,” the words are soft, a little choked, but genuine, sincere.

Mac sighs and turns back to offer him a grim smile. “I'll need to redo the stitches in a week, and I want you to bathe them in diluted iodine every night before bed – without _fail_, Jack.”

He nods, at least sensible enough not even to begin to argue the instruction.

“Are you going to tell Jane?” he asks, and it carries that same almost childish quality as his demeanour when he'd first walked through the door. She should take comfort, she supposes, in the fact that however far gone he may be, it's still not quite so much that he can face upsetting Jane.

“How about we compromise?” she offers. “You don't end up back in my kitchen needing stitching, and I don't tell Jane.”

Jack sighs, shaking his head. “You know I can't make that promise, Mac.”

Mac folds her arms across her chest, raising a stern and unamused eyebrow at him. “Then I can't promise I won't tell Jane.”

“It would only upset her if you told her.”

“You’re absolutely right,” she levels back at him. “It would.”

He stares back at her, indignant, but she meets his gaze with similarly steely determination. This is a battle she staunchly refuses to let him win – for Phryne’s sake if nothing else. As angry as she herself might be, as much as she sometimes feels the urge to do the same, to throw herself into work and neglect her own responsibilities to herself, she is too much a doctor.

There are days – just as at the beginning when the loss was fresh and the wound still gaped, though still more now than she’d care admit – when all she wants to do is hide away from the world and drown her grief in whiskey. There are nights, even now, when she comes close.

It won’t do, though, losing who they are to grief. It is, in nature, the very opposite of everything that Phryne stood for, and Mac knows that she wouldn’t care for them using her to excuse their own foolishness.

Infection has spread, but she cannot amputate hearts, so instead she’ll just keep fighting it – and she will win.

She’s determined she will win.

Jack holds his ground for several minutes until finally she sees him break. It starts at the eyes, the steel melting down and welling there as tears, and as the first one escapes his entire demeanour breaks, the rest of him melting, too, from shoulder to toe and sagging where he sits in the small wooden chair, one hand coming to cover his face.

Mac crosses back to him, crouching beside him and placing a hand on his knee. It’s little comfort, she knows, but it’s what she has to offer.

“Go home, Jack,” she tells him, as gently as she can. “Go and see Jane, have a cocoa, read a book. There are still things left you love, go and remind yourself.”

He is nonresponsive for a moment, but then takes a deep breath, removing his hand and looking back at her. Without the defensiveness, the evasiveness, the steel, Mac sees the rawness of the wound as it truly is and feels herself sigh.

She will be treating this for a long time – but then she is still treating her own.

“Go home,” she says again, even softer, and Jack nods.

“Please don’t tell Jane,” he pleads, and Mac opens her mouth to argue – because this cycle of hiding it is helpful to neither of them, but then, “I should tell her, it’s only fair she hears it from me.”

At this she gives a grim smile and nods, content at least with this little victory. “Good, alright then.”

Jack rubs brusquely at the wetness on his cheeks, then stands, retrieving his coat. He shrugs it on in silence and strides towards the door back into the hall, then stops, turning back.

“Thank you, Mac,” he says, the words low and gravely serious. She knows how much he means it – doesn’t even really need him to say it, though it’s appreciated. After all, she knows, deep down, that Jack is a man who wants to heal.

“I’d say any time, Jack, but perhaps we should leave it at no more stitches, hm?”

He lets out a soft hum of laughter at that, tapping his fingers against the doorframe in acknowledgement of this and nodding, his expression finally brightening a little.

“In which case I’ll endeavour not to be wounded next time I see you, Doctor – save for the unhealable ones,” he adds, tone still lighter, though the words may not be.

“All wounds heal, Jack,” she replies, serious in face of his joking. “Some just need a little more time and extra caring for.”

“Good job we have a doctor on our side then, I suppose.”

She smirks. “You’re damn right about that, Inspector.”

He shoots her one last smile – small but genuine – and then turns to leave, and Mac returns to the remains of her stitch up job. She had intended to wait to tidy until she had had a drink, but she finds now she just wants it dealt with, and she busies herself cleaning the table, wiping away the remains of Jack’s blood where it has dripped onto the stone floor.

Once she’s done she retreats to her parlour, pouring herself a large whiskey and settling beside the fire with a heavy sigh.

She’s quite lost count of the number of times, since it happened, that she has had to stitch Jack up. It’s not conscious on his part, she knows it isn’t – often it’s just him being careless where he used to be careful rather than actively seeking out the damage – but it doesn’t do much to change the results.

She has been stitching all of them up though, herself included, from the start – but then, she’s a doctor, and it’s what she does. She had done it for Phryne long before any of the others had been part of their lives, and she will do it for everyone Phryne has left, because she loves them just as much and because, frankly, someone has to.

Grief, perhaps, is one of the nastiest infections she’s fought – but she will defeat it.

Mac will stitch them all back up and then maybe, just maybe, they will be whole again if Phryne ever returns home.  



	8. "Don't move."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a spider on the loose, and Phryne is not amused. G.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to _God_ (and Satan, and a few random harvest deities, and all) this was literally just meant to be a stupid drabble about spiders. And then things happened and my brain was like "LET'S EXPLORE THE CONCEPT OF NEEDING PEOPLE - _GO!_"
> 
> So anyway it's not 600 words about spiders. It is... whatever this is. 
> 
> Spiders are still involved, though.

“Don’t move.”

There’s a glint in his eyes as he says it. A childish amusement that she really, _really_ does not appreciate in the present moment. 

“So help me, Jack, if you don’t get that thing out of here right this minute…”

“I’m curious to see how you plan to follow through on any threats, Miss Fisher, when your exit route is blocked.”

She glares at him, but as she does the spider crawls back into her eyeline and she shudders, stepping back and clambering up onto the window seat. 

“Move it, Jack, I’m serious.”

He folds his arms, tilting his head to inspect the creature – posture far more comfortable than Phryne is happy with. 

“What with?”

“I don’t. Care,” she grits out. “Just move it.”

Jack does what she can only imagine is his best (she’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he _tried_, even if it hadn’t worked that well) to school the amusement off his face, and then steps forward toward the offending arachnid, crouching down and reaching towards it. 

As he does, Phryne let's out a tiny, involuntary, “Jack!”, stopping him in his tracks. He looks up at her, one eyebrow raised in question and amusement both. 

“Yes, Miss Fisher?” 

“Well you're not _actually_ going to use your bare hands, are you?” she demands, genuinely concerned for his safety (or sanity, at least).

“I thought you didn't care what I used,” he levels back, and she glares at him. 

“I obviously didn't think you would use your hands, you ridiculous man.”

Jack's smirk broadens into a smile, and he stands again, slowly, walking with very deliberate steps back towards the drinks trolley and picking up a crystal cut tumbler, holding it up between thumb and forefinger. 

“Happy?” he asks, and she considers. 

She'd really hate to have to throw away any of her crystal cuts. She could buy more, she supposes, but that seems a little needlessly wasteful – or she could ensure Mr. Butler just washes it with boiling water, though the issue with that is she’ll still _know_. 

“Phryne?” Jack asks, expectant, and she shakes herself, looking back at him. 

She’d rather lose a glass than Jack, though. 

“I suppose it’ll do.”

“Right then.”

Jack sighs, crouching down again to place the glass carefully around the spider. Phryne feels a breath of relief come out as soon as it’s trapped, but tenses again when Jack reaches out a hand towards her. 

“Come here.”

She scoffs, backing up against the window. 

“Not likely.”

He rolls his eyes. “The only way to get over your fear, Miss Fisher, is to face it head on. And I know you don’t need me to tell you that.”

“You’re absolutely right, Jack,” she shoots back. “I don’t. Now get rid of it, won’t you?”

Jack, though, appears to remain unmoved. 

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Phryne, I promise.”

“I very much beg to differ, Jack,” she mutters. “And so would a murder victim of ours.”

“That wasn’t really the spider’s fault, Miss Fisher, we can’t hold it against them all.”

Phryne lets out a somewhat unamused chuckle at this, shaking her head. “I absolutely can. And will continue to for the foreseeable future.”

“Well what are you going to do next time? I’m not always going to be readily available to remove them for you.” Jack stands, leaving the glass upturned on the carpet and staring her down with a glint in his eye that’s dangerously close to victory. 

She absolutely isn’t going to let him win this one, though.

“I’ll just get Mr. Butler to do it instead,” she replies, lifting her chin in defiance.

Jack raises a single eyebrow, unmoved as ever, and Phryne grinds her jaw in frustration at his cool. She knows what he’s going to say, of course she does. It still irritates her when the words come out.

“Mr. Butler’s scared of spiders, too.”

“Dot then,” she parries, still determined. “She loves all God’s creatures.”

“So she says,” Jack shoots back with a little nod. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to be near them all.”

“Bert and Cec.”

“Not always here, either.”

“Jane.”

“See the above.”

“_Someone_,” she grits out. “I’ll get _someone else_ to move it.”

“What, will you open the door and shout for a random stranger off the street?” he counters, folding his arms across his chest.

“If necessary.”

“Sounds fool proof.”

She huffs, far angrier than the logical part of her brain knows she should be – but the logical part of her brain had upped and bolted the minute eight hairy legs had scuttled out from under the chaise, mid-sentence. In its absence, the only thing left in her is an odd, dangerous mixture of irrational fear and sheer bloody frustration. 

This is probably why, instead of any kind of clever comeback or witty repartee, her only response to Jack’s smug expression of victory is, “Look, I don’t _need_ you, Jack!”

After which the room falls silent, and the amusement falls from Jack’s face.

Instantly, she regrets it.

“I just meant – ” she starts, but she’s not sure what she meant, the logic still gone from her brain. “Jack, I didn’t…” She huffs. “I’m sorry.”

A line appears between Jack’s brows. “Sorry?” he asks. “Why are you sorry?”

Phryne blinks. “Well, I –”

“I don’t need you to need me, Miss Fisher,” Jack says, expression suddenly deadly serious. “I don’t _want _you to need me.”

She stares back at him, a little speechless. 

“I want you to want me,” he admits then, burying his hands in his pockets with a shrug. “But I know you don’t need anyone other than yourself, and I’m quite content with that.”

Phryne opens and closes her mouth, trying to find the words she wants but coming up empty. 

“I do want you,” she manages, eventually, a hushed whisper. “Jack, I… I do want you.”

They stare at each other across the five feet of distance between them – Jack by the piano and her still standing precariously on the window seat, back against the glass. 

She suddenly wishes they were much closer. And that there wasn’t a spider in between them battering its evil little legs against her best glassware trying to get out. 

“I’d quite like to kiss you right now,” Phryne tells him, voice firmer but still breathy. “But there’s still the matter of the arachnid.”

Jack’s mouth pulls up again in one corner, eyeing the glass and then looking back at her. He holds out a hand.

Phryne shakes her head. 

“Miss Fisher, you are – without doubt – the most fearless person I know. I have faith that you can face this one.”

She looks from Jack to the tumbler and back again, screwing up her face for a moment as she fights the internal battle of logic versus absolute irrationality. 

She steps off the window seat. 

“I think it’s moved.”

“I promise you, it hasn’t.”

Phryne eyes it with suspicion, stepping past the upturned glass with as wide a berth as possible and reaching blindly for Jack’s hand. Her fingers meet his and he pulls her around to safety with gentle fingers where she allows herself to fall into his hold. 

“There,” he breathes into her hair. “You did it.”

“It’s still there,” she points out indignantly against his chest, and feels the soft laugh that rumbles through him. 

“Yes,” he admits. “But you’re not trapped anymore.”

“I still want it gone.”

Jack pulls back to look her in the eye, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “Then you know what you need to do.”

Phryne swallows, head shaking involuntarily before she can even muster her own conscious disagreement. 

“Jack, I can’t.”

He spins her around to face the glass. “Yes,” he breathes in her ear, warm and reassuring, with a gentle squeeze of her shoulders. “You can.”

She takes a steadying breath, a half-step towards the glass, and then the creature rears up in threat and she shudders, turning back on him.

“Why does it matter so much that I do this?” she demands, hands coming to her hips as she stares him down. “I don’t see why you can’t just do it for me.”

“Because it never hurt to get over our fears,” he offers, unhelpfully.

“I’ve got over plenty, thank you,” she shoots back, though, “I’m fine keeping this one how it is.”

“Phryne, just try.”

“Why?”

“Please?”

“_Why_, Jack?”

“Because – I don’t want you to need me!” he exclaims, the lid lifting on his apparent calm, and Phryne stares at him, confused by the outburst. 

“Didn’t we just establish that –”

“That when you feel like you need me you snap, yes,” he huffs. “You’re perfectly competent at everything but on this _one_ thing you always ask for my help and then you bite my head off over it because you don’t like feeling like you needed me.”

“Jack,” she replies, defensive, “this is the first time –”

“Fifth,” he interrupts, holding up a hand. “This is the fifth time you’ve made me do this and it’s the fifth time you’ve been angry about it. I don’t want you to be angry that you’re asking for my help, Phryne, so isn’t it better if I just help you not need it?”

She stares at him, confused, annoyed, touched, all in one. 

“This really bothers you,” she breathes, and he shakes his head with a sigh. 

“I just don’t want you to resent me over something as ridiculous as spiders. This seemed like the solution.”

“Jack,” she asks then, “did it occur to you that maybe I _want_ your help?”

His brow furrows. “If you want it then why are you so angry about it?”

She opens her mouth to answer, but finds she has none. Habit, maybe? Pride? It’s not like she hasn’t had to deal with spiders by herself before, frequently in fact. Normally she’d just use her gun, or maybe a heavy book, but now she thinks on it – he’s right. These days, she always calls him for spiders. 

Not because she needs to, but because she wants to, she’s chosen to – so there really is no logical reason to be angry about it. 

“Maybe…” she starts, thinking aloud as she wonders at her own response. “Maybe I’m just… not used to _wanting_ the help.”

Jack’s expression softens a little at this. “And that’s fine, of course it is – but my concern is that you’ll grow to resent it.”

“The help?”

“Wanting it.”

“Jack,” she sighs, stepping back towards him. She understands his concern, but if she’s certain of anything in this moment, it’s that it’s unfounded. “I’ve never resented my own desires once, even the foolish ones. Our wants are what make us – denying them means denying who we are.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re always the best thing for us.”

“No,” she agrees, with a small and knowing smile. “And mine haven’t been, always – but I strongly don’t believe that’s the case here.”

“Phryne,” Jack murmurs, and the small space between them suddenly doesn’t seem small enough, his voice a magnet drawing her in, bringing her closer. “I just want to be sure that you’re happy. I want to give you the chance to back out without it ruining us, if this is getting too much for you.”

She shoots him a look. Ridiculous man. “Jack,” her voice lowers to that particular tone she likes to use on him to prove he’s being an idiot. “I’m not going to leave you over a spider.”

“It’s not about the spider.”

“I’m not going to leave you because I don’t want to move a spider, then.”

Jack looks at her, gaze open and concerned. “I just… I don’t ever want you to feel diminished by me,” he admits, and Phryne thinks her heart stops for a brief moment in her chest.

“What?”

He sighs, fingers rising to pinch the bridge of his nose as he seems to decide how to phrase what he wants to say. Then his hand drops away again, and he looks back at her. “I’d happily carry you a thousand miles, Phryne, should you need it – but you never would, and I’m worried that if I carry you even a step you’ll feel like I stole your legs.”

Phryne stares at him a little dumbstruck for a moment before she finally manages to murmur a response. “I feel like that metaphor was overcomplicated,” she quips, because she’s a little overwhelmed by what he’s saying, and joking just seems easier.

Jack rolls his eyes. “But you see what I’m saying.”

“You don’t want me to feel like you’re trying to take my agency.”

“Exactly.”

She takes a deep breath. There are a lot of things swirling around in her head – anger, for his insecurity when she feels like they should be past this, gratitude, that he cares enough and knows her enough that this is the sort of thing he worries about, amusement, that as good a detective as Jack is he can be so helplessly oblivious sometimes. 

“You’re missing something, though.”

“Am I?”

“If I ever ask you to carry me, Jack, it’s because I trust you to put me down again – legs and all.”

The relief that floods his face makes Phryne wonder just how long he’s been carrying this insecurity around – and all the more grateful that it’s at least come up now. She can thank the spider for something at least, then.

“And speaking of legs,” she continues, reaching out for his hand. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d get rid of our leggy friend down there. Please.”

The shadow finally starts to lift from Jack’s face again, the glint returning to his eye. “You could still try it yourself,” he suggests.

“No,” Phryne replies emphatically. “No, absolutely not. Jack, I need you to do it.”

He raises an eyebrow at this, and she rolls her eyes. 

“_Want_,” she corrects herself. “I want you to do it.”

“How about,” Jack starts, turning his hand in hers to squeeze her fingers. “We compromise and do it together?” 

Phryne tilts her head, considering. This, she might be willing to try.

“Fine – but if there’s any funny business you’re on your own.”

“Understood,” Jack agrees with a smirk, and they turn to face the entrapped arachnid. 

As they do, though, Phryne feels her heart leap to her throat, terror streaking through her.

“Jack?” she asks, no more than a whisper as she takes in the now sideways glass, decidedly empty of spider. “Where is it?”

Jack turns to her with his own expression of mild panic, eyes roaming around the room. As his gaze falls to the floor between them he stops, swallowing thickly and looking back up at her with an expression she assumes he is trying to keep calm (she’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he tried, even if it hasn’t worked that well). 

“Phryne?” he asks, and she decidedly does not like his tone.

“Yes, Jack?”

“Don’t move.”


	9. Ransom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time in their acquaintance Jack is concerned Phryne might do something as ladylike as fainting as it sits in her trembling fingers – but in true Fisher fashion she seems to catch the reaction in its early stages, steadying herself even as she falters, overcorrecting with such apparent force of will that it moves her feet up the stairs and when she returns a moment later it’s with her pistol in hand.
> 
> Teen and up. (A).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it took half the month but the whump slump came for me and my muse got a little, well, down in the dumps. Mainly because the follow up to Stitches is _destroying_ me - but the good news is it's gone in for a little reupholstering, and in the meantime I am trying very hard to fight on through and not allow myself to become defeated. So naturally, to counter the crushing sense of failure, I wrote something depressing. My sincere apologies for this, but perchance it shall lift my spirits to write some like, not depressing shit... eventually.

It happens right under their noses, that’s the worst part about it all. 

Unsubtle as they have always been about discussing the details of their cases inside the four walls of sanctity that Phryne’s parlour has always represented, it never occurs to either of them _not_ to discuss it there. It never occurs to either of them that being overheard within her own home could ever cause issue for them.

It’s their own fault, really, for being so unthinking – for underestimating the wit and tenacity of a young girl without many people she loves, desperate to save one of that small number.

Of course, given the chance, Jane would go looking for her kidnapped friend, they should have known she would.

They are too careless with their information, and they don’t even realise that she’s gone until the note turns up, crisp and perfect (and perfectly heart-breaking) on the doorstep.

For the first time in their acquaintance Jack is concerned Phryne might do something as ladylike as fainting as it sits in her trembling fingers – but in true Fisher fashion she seems to catch the reaction in its early stages, steadying herself even as she falters, overcorrecting with such apparent force of will that it moves her feet up the stairs and when she returns a moment later it’s with her pistol in hand.

There are tears on her cheeks, but her eyes are steel, and Jack thinks he’s never seen anything so beautiful or terrifying as this.

There are words that sit heavy on his tongue, warnings and pleas and dissuasions. So many parts of him want her to sit this out, to stay home and safe and let him take an army of men and bring Jane home to her whilst she sits safely away from the filth of the men who’ve done this.

This isn’t an option, though, he knows. It’s never an option – this he had learnt the hard way when he’d arrested her for her own safety and the next time he’d seen her she’d been voluntarily drugged, holding a gun in an (albeit successful) attempt at rescue. That hadn’t been the last time he’d asked, but it had certainly been the last time he’d been surprised by her refusal.

Instead he reaches a hand out across the space between them, and when her fingers grasp his he pulls her closer, one hand on her cheek.

“Carefully, Phryne,” he whispers, with everything he has. “We do this carefully.”

She takes a shaky breath, but nods.

“We have to get her back, Jack,” is her only response, and he nods, squeezes her hand, and retrieves his own gun.

“We will get her back,” he promises, as they leave. “Together.”

“Together,” she affirms, and kisses him once, brief but passionate, before marching off into the night with her hand clasped almost as tightly around his as the other is around her gun.

The Commissioner nearly throws a fit when Jack tells him he’s bringing the raid forward, but his words fall flat to Jack’s complete apathy towards them. The matter of a few hours means nothing to him when Jane’s life is at stake. Besides which, they don’t know if her capture means the traffickers know they’ve been discovered. If they move them early then she’s lost, they all are, and this is not an option. Failure is not an option.

He lets Collins drive because he’s sure he cannot, and neither can Phryne; instead they sit with their hands still clasped silently as they both recall a night like this from years past. A ship waiting to sail with Phryne aboard, bound and gagged, and Jack’s desperate plight to stop it.

That victory had been a joint effort, in the end, with far fewer hands than they have now – and this, if nothing else, comforts him. They have numbers on their side this time, and the Commissioner, even if he might have grumbled about it. The outlook is favourable, and he tells himself this repeatedly.

He tells himself that they are going in together this time right from the off, and together they can win.

This is a mantra he repeats in his head as, by necessity, he lets go of her hand to address his men, as they split up and take off into the inky black of the night, hurrying off through the narrow alleys between buildings and moving into position to surround the warehouse.

This operation has been planned, he reminds himself, carefully, even if they have rushed it through its final hours. This is a fight they can and will win.

He turns to Phryne, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, knuckles white around her gun, and steels himself. He gives the signal.

They move methodically, sweeping through the building, a synchronised wave of justice attacking from every angle, meeting little resistance at first; but the ground gets rockier as their opposition start to realise they are trapped, and the fight soon turns their wave to white water.

The traffickers have guns, which is unsurprising but less than ideal, and Jack watches in horror as two of his men go down. What he knows to be realistic and what his heart want suddenly start to blur to muddy indistinguishability and he finds his panic warring with reason on his tongue.

Jack turns to Phryne where she crouches beside him behind a crate. Her face is still determined but her eyes show the same horror he feels at the dead bodies of officers – officers she’d been delivering Dot’s scones to only last week – lying three feet away from them on the cold dirt floor.

“If I asked you to get out,” he breathes, and the words are desperate – more so if only because he already knows their futility.

“You wouldn’t,” she replies, meeting his gaze. There’s something in it that’s closer to apology than he might expect, and she gives him a rueful smile. “Because you already know the answer.”

He stares back at her, heart at war with his head, and swallows down the urge to argue. He can no more ask it of her than he can offer it himself. He knows neither of them will stop until Jane is safe, and he takes a deep breath instead, closing his eyes and nodding.

“Together, then?”

She reaches over to squeeze his hand. “Together.”

They fight on, joining eventually with the teams from the north and south east who seem, at least, to have made better progress and lost fewer men than they have. When the team from the south arrive they make the final push, storming the dark room where their criminal kingpin and his henchmen wait. They put up a fight, but sheer numbers overwhelm them, and the win comes remarkably easily, in the end, despite the number of bullets fired. Easily enough that the men that lie dead in the corridors that have led to it feel, to Jack, an even crueller joke.

He watches on in disgust as his men cuff them all, mind on the victory yet to occur, and turns his attention towards where information is fast being relayed to him.

“There was a group being held in a room off the north corridor, sir,” a sergeant reports, “we’re evacuating them now. North West went to help investigate reports from the girls there of some prisoners being held separately in the west wing.”

Phryne, who has seemed oddly, quietly preoccupied with her own panic, snaps to attention at this, eyes on him. He knows what she’s thinking, but there’s no way to be sure yet.

“Did they say why, Kingsley?” he asks, and the man nods, grim, eyes flicking to Phryne and back.

“Say they’re the ones being held ransom, sir. Nicer treated, but more securely held.”

Jack feels Phryne tense beside him, her breath hitched and shaky.

“Good work, Sergeant,” Jack tells him. “See to it that all the girls are out and then finish securing the northern end of the building. And ensure there are officers on every exit – I don’t want to hear that a single one of their men has escaped, understood?”

Kingsley nods, and hurries off again with two constables in tow.

Jack turns to Phryne, unsurprised that she is already looking at him. She’s paled considerably, trembling, a tightness behind the panic in her eyes, and he has to resist the urge to pull her into him in comfort right there.

“It’s her, Jack,” she insists, breathless. “It has to be – we have to go west.”

“There’s a whole squad in that part of the building, Phryne, they’ll get her,” he says, voice low.

“What if they don’t?” she demands. “What if they don’t get her, Jack, are we supposed to just sit here and wait? I _need _to know that she’s safe.” There’s something desperately urgent in her tone that Jack knows he’ll never be able to argue with – even should he want to.

He nods.

“Alright.” He turns to look around the room. “Jones, Heggarty, Leech – with me,” he calls, and the constables all turn, marching straight over.

Jack glances in Phryne’s direction, at the panic that still sits, seeming heavier by the minute, in her eyes – and squares his shoulders. “I want us to head across and ensure the men in the western part of the building have everything under control. Heggarty exit north and if there are men free then circle west with them and meet us there. Jones and Leech you can accompany me and Miss Fisher.”

They all nod, Heggarty taking off again.

They progress far easier this time, Phryne’s pace only seeming to become more frantic as they navigate the darkened corridors, and Jack increases his own to keep up with her. They may have taken most of the organisation down but there’s no knowing if anyone else might be lurking in the shadows, and he won’t let her fall at the final hurdle.

She’s half a step in front, still, though, and she rounds the final corner just that split second ahead of him.

She stops dead.

Then breaks into a run, calling.

“Jane!” she cries, and he sprints after her, relief flooding through him as he sees the girl, surrounded by uniformed officers, turn where she is being guided past a heavy-set iron door.

Her eyes light up in realisation a moment before Phryne has descended on her, shrugging off the comforting hand of a constable and taking off towards her adoptive mother, throwing her arms around her as Phryne does the same, squeezing her tightly and pressing her face into her hair.

Jack catches them up a moment later, and Jane’s eyes open at the sound of his footsteps, reaching for him immediately she does so, and he allows himself to be pulled in, the relief overwhelming him as he feels the solidness of her arm where it can’t quite reach all the way around his back.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles where her face is still pressed against Phryne. “I'm so sorry, I just wanted to help.”

“Shh, it’s fine, you’re safe now,” Phryne comforts – and Jane pulls back from them both to look at them, tears in her eyes.

“You’re not cross?”

Phryne stares back at her, breathing heavy – he can only assume from the run and the relief both – and smirks. The amusement doesn’t quite reach her eyes, but the quirk of humour on her lips at least is a welcome sight after so many hours of worry.

“Absolutely furious, Jane, and we’ll be having words about it later.”

Jane’s expression falls a little, worry entering her gaze, and Phryne reaches out to stroke a piece of hair from her face.

“But only after a hot bath and some chocolate cake.”

The girl smiles at this, sighing in relief and leaning in to squeeze Phryne again before finally releasing her as a sergeant approaches them.

“We’ve cleared this entire section, Inspector Robinson,” he confirms for him. “There were eight girls being held here, one for each ransom note. The South West squad are sweeping for any remaining perps.”

Jack nods, giving his officer a grim smile. “Good, thank you, Sergeant.”

The man nods and turns away again.

Jane looks up at them both. “Can we go home now?” And Jack smiles.

“Yes, Jane, we can.”

She smiles back at him and then turns to skip off in the direction of the congregated officers, and he moves to follow after, reaching down to squeeze Phryne’s hand as he does so.

There is a large part of him that wants to celebrate, here, now, to grab her and kiss her and luxuriate in their victory, commiserate in their losses. But there’s work to be done, and that can come later.

For now, this will do. The knowledge that they have made it will do.

He falls into step behind Jane, heading on down the hallway, where light has started trickling in through doors and windows busted through by his men in their assault on the building. She passes through a beam of it, two feet in front, and Jack pauses, panic flickering into flame in his gut.

“Jane!” he calls, and she turns, frowning at what he knows is clear concern in his voice. Jack runs to her, crouching down and placing a hand on each arm, examining her face for signs of pain.

“Are you injured?” he demands, frantic, but Jane’s frown only deepens. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I’m not hurt, Jack,” she tells him, sounding confused. “They didn’t touch me.”

“What?” he asks, and spins her around, examining the dark smudge of red across her back. “But, Jane, there’s blood on you.”

“_What?_” she exclaims, alarmed, trying to peer over her own shoulder. “How – I’m not hurt!”

“It’s…” Jack stands, taking a step back to look at her. The smear seems to have travelled, reproduced itself on her arm as well, a dark, violent smear. “Then how…”

Jane shakes her head, as at a loss as he himself seems. “It must be someone else’s.”

It takes his brain a solid ten seconds for those words to truly register, and then he looks at her again, at the smeared but still just about distinguishable handprint on her back, at the red finger marks on her sleeve.

Jack looks down at his own hand, trembling, and bloody.

“Sir!”

He feels weightless as he turns, as if he has separated from himself and is watching, disembodied, from above until his eyes fall on her and he slams violently back into himself with the all the force of a train into a brick wall.

Constable Jones is standing, alarmed, over where Phryne has fallen to her knees, hand on her side, head bowed as she continues to breathe heavily, wincing at every breath as it comes.

“Miss Fisher!” Jane cries from behind him, the words as distressed as he feels, but he cannot move, cannot speak, can only stare at her from fifteen feet away down the darkened corridor.

Jane starts to run, and this at least spurs him to action, reaching out an arm to catch her, stop her.

He feels like his brain has been filled with treacle, clogged up and slowed down – _now_, when speed is of the essence. Both constables look at him in distress and confusion, and to his relief their helplessness helps.

He himself might be lost in this moment, but if nothing else he can lead. He can command.

“Leech,” he calls, and the constable hurries over. “Take Miss Ross,” he instructs, and she turns scandalised, tearful eyes to him. “Take her outside, Leech.”

“No, Jack, please!” she protests, and the young man hesitates, looking at the distressed girl and back again.

“_Go_, Constable.”

He reaches down and takes her, firm but gentle, by the arm, pulling her away despite her protests.

“Jones, go and see if there are still ambulances on hand and send a crew straight here if there are, if there aren’t then call for one – _immediately_.”

“Yes, sir!” he instructs, and scampers off in the same direction.

“Jack?” her voice sounds oddly small yet still seems to echo off the darkened walls and bounce around him.

He closes the distance in an instant, time speeding up again as he falls to his knees in front of her, hands flying to her where hers is still pressed against her side. At this proximity, now he knows to look, he can see the thick, dark liquid that spills between her fingers, a sharp contrast to the paleness of her skin.

“Phryne,” he breathes, shocked, desperate, scared. “Why didn’t you tell me?” and these words are angry, frustrated. “Why didn’t you _say something_, dammit!”

She looks up, finally, and there are tears on her cheeks but her eyes are steel. Jack thinks again that he’s never seen anything so beautiful or terrifying as this.

“I had to know, Jack,” she whispers, and the words are rasping and full of pain, but unapologetic, “I had to make sure she was safe first.”

“You’re a fool,” he sighs, but there’s no bite to it, only despair.

At this, her mouth pulls into a small smirk. “We won, though.”

He doesn’t want to argue with her, now of all moments, but he cannot agree that this is victory.

“It’s only a win if we do it together.”

“Well I’d much rather we didn’t Romeo and Juliet the situation, Jack, so I’m afraid you might have to accept this one as a solo victory.”

As she says this Phryne sways where she is still resting on her knees and Jack, accustomed as he so is to her steadying herself, even as she falters, almost doesn’t catch her.

It’s the fact that he has to that finally causes the reality of it all to crash down on him.

He pulls her carefully into his arms, one hand assuming the position of pressure where her own is starting to tire, and tries not to wince at the feel of her blood, warm and sticky beneath his fingers as it floods out of her. Her shirt is soaking, and he cannot help but wonder just how long she has been silently bleeding out beside him, the injury hidden by the darkness, and the thick black fabrics of her outfit.

He almost wants to ask, to demand to know how long her life has been secretly slipping out of her whilst they fought side by side, whilst he celebrated victory and allowed relief to pool in him the way her blood is now pooling in a cruel mockery of his comfort on the floor – but he knows this will not help.

If Jones doesn’t manage to get an ambulance crew to her soon then the minutes will not matter.

They may not even matter if he does.

“Jack?” her voice breaks him from his thoughts, and he allows himself to meet her eye again.

“Yes?”

“I was careful,” she whispers, and he swears he feels his heart shatter inside him as she does. “We were both careful, this is just rotten luck.”

He can’t help but let out a soft laugh at that. It’s certainly one way to put it.

“I know you were,” he replies – because as frustrated and angry as he might be by her keeping this from him, he cannot and will not blame her for it – he knows he’d have done the same thing, after all. “I know you were.”

He holds her tighter, pressing his lips against the hair that covers her forehead, and then resting his cheek against her.

“Please,” he murmurs, and almost surprises himself at the level of desperation that colours it. “Please, Phryne, be careful a little while longer. Please just hold on.”

“I’ll do my best,” she quips, and it would be a lot more charming and a lot more _convincing_ if it weren’t immediately followed by a cough that splatters blood across her chin. “Then again,” she adds, a look of distaste briefly overtaking the pain in her expression, “I’m not sure I’m in a position to be making any promises.”

Jack shakes his head, amused and devastated all at once. Of course she would make jokes _now_.

“I don’t need you to make promises,” he tells her, keeping his voice as soft as he can. “I just need you to stay.”

She pulls back slightly, enough for him to lift his head again and look down at her properly, meet her eye. All the joking has gone from her expression and her face might be the most open he’s ever seen it. Pale, and blood stained. Her eyes are pained and determined, steely and terrified. She somehow simultaneously looks ready to face death, and also to steal his scythe and dance off into the distance refusing to let him catch her.

His chest tightens painfully as he watches the emotions swirl through her.

There are so many words he has which he could say to her, but he doesn't want to have to say them now, here, in this situation. He will say them every day or never again, however she prefers, if only she is alive for the option to be there, just not _here_, not like this.

“Please stay,” he begs, and horror descends on him as her eyes fill at the request.

She reaches up with fingers that tremble, bloody, and places a hand on his cheek.

“It is more fun when we do things together,” she admits.

“Infinitely,” he agrees, doing his best to keep his voice steady and his own tears from falling.

“Promise you'll still try to have some without me, Jack,” she breathes, and then the hand falls, and her eyes flicker closed.

Jack watches, helpless, and blinks away the hot tears that blind him.

Unobscured, his gaze stays fixed on her face. In stillness (_in death_, his mind whispers though he refuses to accept it), tear tracks down her cheeks, blood smeared across her pale skin, but steel in her expression somehow even now, Jack still thinks he’s never seen anything so beautiful or terrifying as this.

Later, though, when he walks into a hospital room, her blood dried into his suit, shoulders bowed by exhaustion, heart fractured but miraculously unbroken, and looks at her sleeping – face cleaned, chest moving with the steady rise and fall of life, steel ever-present even in the peacefulness of sleep – he _knows_ he has never seen anything as beautiful as her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! This was also Day 24's Secret Injury - but I couldn't tell you... because then it would't be a secret. In exchange for this deceit, she's alive, so - call it even?


	10. Tear-stained (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne Fisher has been dead for over a year when she turns up again on the doorstep. An optional follow up to 'Stitches'. Mainly Phryne & Mac, some Jack & Mac, and a lot of poor, long-suffering Mac trying to sort Phrack's shit. G.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pain. Trauma. Sheer bloody agony. These are all things you might be worried you'll find in today's chapter, but never fear, it's just how I felt trying to get the words on a page. "Let's stay in Mac's POV for a _big, emotional phrack piece_, that seems like a good idea!" are not words I'll ever be saying to myself again. I'm not saying I _don't_ recommend exploring severe relationship trauma through the eyes of a sassy but loving doctoral third party, I'm just saying it was absolutely horrible and I don't recommend it. Thankfully, I had an angel by the name of acrazyobsession who helped me to work through some of the emotional tangles, and I cannot thank her enough for letting me scream my frustrations in writing this at her. 
> 
> So, anyway, here's the (optional!!) follow up to Stitches. If you liked that one as is, I do strongly recommend giving this a miss. Also the good(?) news is that writing this was just bad enough that I decided I now need to cover Phryne's perspective, so Part 3 will hopefully occur as well as also.

Jack keeps his promise.

After the incident at the docks he makes a concerted effort to take better care of himself, to stand strong in the face of his anger and his grief instead of allowing it to swallow him as he has been. He makes a decision that he will no longer put himself in positions that ultimately necessitate physical stitching, even if sometimes he still requires it emotionally. 

It's not an easy thing, being kind to himself when most of him no longer cares to, but it's made easier by the changes he sees it making in everyone else. His pain, he cannot deny, had been their pain, too; and they were all of them dealing with quite enough already without shouldering his.

As a habit, it doesn't break overnight, but as it does – and he notes with slightly less blinkered vision the weight it takes off shoulders around him already too bowed by grief – he suddenly feels immensely relieved that Mac had helped kick him out of it.

After all, it's not like deep down he doesn't want to heal. Of course he does, it's just the how that's been alluding him.

How can anyone heal when the hurt feels so open-ended, so inconclusive? How can he heal when he has to live without the comfort of answers?

It does come, though, he finds – with time. Slowly, the edges of the wound start to feel less ragged, not healed – he doesn’t know that it ever will _heal_ per se – but he manages to shake off his own self-pity enough to be the support system that he should have been from the start.

Once Jack has stepped back from his own grief, he finally sees how affected the rest of them have been, how much has changed in all of them as they have come to terms with this loss.

It is a cruel reminder of the fact that this has not been his own personal nightmare, that he will not wake up one morning to find the loss undone. It is real, and there is nothing he can do about it but carry on and help them all with him – so he throws himself at it.

He makes up for all the time lost playing victim. He mentors Hugh, he supports Dot, he schools and loves Jane like the daughter she has long been to him. In the evenings, he often still laments with Mac – but he lets it be the equal give and take it always should have been.

He helps her stitch up the others.

By the time the first anniversary comes, they are managing. Not whole, he thinks, not the same. Grief still sits over them like a cloud he doubts will ever fully disperse – but the sun has found ways to glimpse through nevertheless.

Some days, when they are all together and their numbers feel like an army gathered against the obviousness of her absence, he thinks he even spots patches of blue sky.

It isn’t easy, but they manage.

This is not a nightmare, but real life from which he cannot wake, and slowly he finds himself coming to terms with that.

And this is why, when he opens his door on a Friday morning – expecting the postman or perhaps a neighbour – everything that he’s built back up so carefully since their loss tilts wildly back off centre.

Because, if it wasn’t all a nightmare, how can he have woken up to find Phryne Fisher – fourteen months dead – at the front door?

*

Mac is minding her own business reading when the telephone rings, and her immediate response is to glare at it for interrupting what she had hoped would be a quiet Friday morning. She’s no appointments scheduled, no students to teach, no autopsies waiting – yet. A phone call almost certainly means she’s about to have one, though, and she just _really_ doesn’t feel like it today. Sometimes, especially these days, death grates.

She resigns herself to fate, however, when she finally moves herself to answer and Jack’s voice greets her with a low, “Mac, it’s me.”

Definitely an autopsy, then.

“Dead body?” she asks, and Jack is silent. Her resignation instantly turns to anxiety. “Jack?”

“I…” he trails off, and in his silence it’s as if she sees the nose pinch. “I don’t… I don’t know, Mac, I think I’m…”

“What?” she insists, sharply concerned. Jack has been doing well – so well – for so long now. The days of stitching him up and putting him back together have long since passed, and they’ve been partners in their grief for longer now than they hadn’t. Jack has been her closest ally in keeping everyone else together for so long that the thought of him suddenly relapsing is distinctly disconcerting. “_Jack_?” she insists. “What is it?”

“She’s here,” he whispers, and Mac freezes.

“Jack, what do you mean?”

“I mean she’s _here_, Mac, she’s… she was just… God, I think I’m going insane, that must be it.”

Panic curls in Mac’s stomach. Maybe he’s drunk – although she’d hope not at half nine on a Friday morning. Or he’s right and he’s going insane – not that that would necessarily be preferable since at least drunkenness is temporary. Insanity, well…

“Jack,” she begins, doing her utmost to keep her voice steady. “You’re going to have to give me a little more context.”

He sighs on the other end of the line, clearly frustrated. “Either I am suffering from some sort of severe mental break, Doctor, or she’s _here_, somehow – now I’d deeply appreciate your assistance in establishing which it is.”

Mac swallows, heart thudding in her chest.

Jack doesn’t sound like he’s suffering from a mental break. Or like he’s drunk. He sounds like Jack – disturbed, confused, concerned – but still _Jack_.

She doesn’t want to believe it – doesn’t want to hope – and yet.

“I’ll be right over,” she replies, then ends the call, staring at the phone for a full minute before stirring to action.

When she reaches Wardlow nothing looks out of place, nothing changed to when she’d last been around two nights ago, yet something feels different.

It’s obvious the minute she reaches the front door – standing half open as if someone had quite forgotten to close it – and steps into the front hall. There is absolute silence everywhere – no sign of anyone (though, she remembers, it is Friday and Mr. Butler has the morning off) – yet it still feels unbalanced. The parlour door, too, is hanging slightly ajar, and she pushes it open with cautious fingers, breath catching in her throat as she does so.

“Hello, Mac.”

Mac is relatively certain that she has a minor heart attack right there on the threshold.

This, she asserts to her scrambled brain right off the bat, _cannot_ be real.

_She_ cannot be real.

“Surprise?” Phryne says, too high-pitched to sound genuine, with a small shrug and a hopeful smile that doesn’t mask the absolute terror that’s hanging in her face as she waits for a reaction. A face that’s too thin, too angular, Mac cannot help but note – surrounded by hair that’s grown enough that the logical part of her brain whispers that all the mismatched facts of her appearance point to startling reality.

This cannot be reality, though, because Phryne is alive and well and sitting neatly on her chaise as if she hadn’t been declared dead over a year ago.

“You’re looking pretty spry for a corpse,” Mac replies, the only words her brain seems to be able to muster.

Phryne (if this truly is Phryne and Mac isn't just suffering some shared delusion) fidgets, an insecurity in her demeanour that sits strangely on what Mac has always known to be such a confident frame.

“The magics of eastern medicine,” she offers, but the joke is wrong, off-key somehow.

This, Mac decides, with a devastating pang, is not quite Phryne – which is exactly how she finally knows that she’s real.

As surreal as that may be.

It’s as this hits her that she finds herself moving, striding forward and sweeping her off the chaise and into a bone-crushing hug. A bit too literally, for her liking, considering the fact that she can feel half of them. Phryne clings to her with a desperation she’s only felt once before in her embrace, and the memory of it – and the trauma that had put it there – cuts at her.

Whatever has happened, wherever she’s been, this confirms beyond doubt that this prolonged absence has been through no choice of her own.

It allows her next words to come out a far deal kinder than most of her wants them to.

“Where the absolute _hell_ have you been?” They’re still a little angry though, she can’t altogether help it.

Phryne pulls back, levity poorly veiling trauma in her face as she looks at her. “I had a little plane trouble.”

“Clearly,” Mac remarks, finally giving her a proper once over. She looks sick, honestly, as if she hasn’t had a proper meal or a good night’s sleep since the last time they saw her two years ago – since they’d lost her, and hope not long after.

“I’d rather hoped I'd be back a little sooner than this, though.”

As she says this, Phryne’s gaze drifts sideways to the fireplace, and Mac follows its course – finally realising that Jack is, in fact, in the room with them – even if he doesn’t seem wholly present.

“I tried my best.”

Mac watches Jack’s fists clench where they sit on the mantelpiece, knuckles white, body lightly trembling. She turns back to Phryne, who is watching his back with thinly disguised desperation.

Phryne looks back at her. “I swear, Mac.”

And Mac’s heart breaks a little. Phryne Fisher is many things – coy, devious, even remarkably selfish at times – but Mac knows how deep her loyalty runs, in spite of these things. She knows – had always known, really, even before the look in her eye had confirmed it – that there’s no way she would have put them through everything they had faced since she disappeared with any kind of deliberate malice.

She might have stretched to running away and not coming back, given the right (or wrong) circumstances – but she’d never have let them believe her dead when she wasn’t, not if she’d had a say in it, Mac knows. There's plenty of questions that she does have about the hows and whys – plenty that Mac intends to pursue at length, later, but not just yet – her doctoring instincts too strong to allow interrogation to ever be at the forefront of proceedings.

And Phryne, quite clearly, needs doctoring.

“When did you eat last?” she demands, trying to kill two birds with one stone and distract her from whatever crisis Jack is quietly working through across the room.

Phryne blinks at the question, tearing her gaze away from where it rests on Jack’s stoic silhouette.

“Yesterday,” she replies, “before leaving Darwin.”

“And when was the last time you ate a _proper_ meal?” she continues.

Phryne grimaces. “Too long.”

“Right.” Mac looks her up and down again, glances to Jack where he remains still by the fireplace, and back to Phryne whose head has turned back to watch him. Mac triages, quickly, and decides her plan of action. “First things first, you need a hot bath and a decent meal. It’s Mr. Butler’s morning off but he’ll be back soon enough, so you might as well get the bath in the meantime.”

Phryne blinks at her, clearly wondering if this is the dismissal it sounds like, and Mac puts a hand on her shoulder, as comforting as she can manage. “You’ll feel more human again afterwards, trust me, there's plenty of time for everything else later.”

There’s a moment’s hesitation where her eyes fall again to Jack, but then she gives a smile that Mac doesn’t believe for a moment, and nods.

“I have been dreaming about my tub for months.”

“There you are then.”

She nods again and turns for the door, but before she reaches it Mac finds her hands moving of their own accord, pulling her back in for another hug.

“Did I mention how glad I am you’re alive?” she asks her softly, and Phryne’s fingers tighten in her jacket.

“It was implied.”

She squeezes her once more and then persuades herself to let go. Whatever happened, wherever she’s been, she hadn’t been running – so Mac knows she’s not a flight risk. It’s enough that she can at least let her out of her sight long enough to deal with… well, whatever’s happening to Jack.

Once Phryne’s footsteps have retreated far enough up the stairs Mac pushes the parlour door closed and shoves her hands into her pockets, squaring off with Jack’s back across the room.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she says – a much gentler start than part of her thinks she should have gone with. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ being another option, or the simple yet effective ‘Are you _insane_?’. She knows he’d thought he was though – maybe still does. Grief is a strange mistress and its effect on Jack had been devastating, at least in the early stages. Whatever is happening in Jack’s head she’s sure it won’t be from any deliberate menace or petty intent, and this is why she does her best to keep her temper despite the part of her that feels oddly, defensively annoyed at his silence.

Her patience today has been a surprise even to her, and she fully intends to reward it with several stiff drinks later when she’s finished doctoring.

“Jack?”

He shakes his head, and she notes the way his hands still tremble. Sighing, Mac crosses the room to him, stepping up beside him and slipping a hand over his. He turns a tear-stained face to her, and she is only a little shocked to see how haunted his eyes are.

“Tell me this isn’t real, Mac,” he mumbles. “Tell me it’s a cruel joke, or a nightmare.”

Mac frowns, confused. “Jack,” she breathes. “Aren’t you happy? She… she’s _alive_, Jack. She’s alive and she’s home.”

“Happy?” he asks, sounding outraged, finally stepping away from the fireplace and pacing back into the room. “She’s been alive, Mac. She’s been alive this whole time, and we had no idea.”

Then again, her patience only stretches so far. She has been Phryne’s friend so long, been with her through many an adventure and seen her disappear off on them alone more times than she can count. In this aspect, Mac realises with sudden clarity, her relationship with Phryne’s absences is, in fairness, quite different to Jack’s. After all, even the first time she’d run away on him Phryne had asked Jack to follow after. Every time since then the offer had always been there, and half the time he’d taken her up on it, depending on the trip and what his work allowed.

Every time she had stepped in that plane solo since Jack it had never been without a smile, a kiss, and a, “you’re sure I can’t tempt you to come with me, Inspector?”.

Jack has never dealt with the disappearing act like Mac has, has never become accustomed to the long stretches of time where infrequent and unpredictable letters were what maintained an entire friendship, physical presence a precious rarity. Jack has always been invited, even if he cannot or will not always go. Their parting has been a choice made jointly between them – unlike the days past where Phryne would blow in and out again like a tornado so that Mac had just learnt to take it with a smile when she arrived and shake her head with an eye roll when she took off again. Jack, though, Jack has no experience of being left hanging like that. For Jack, Mac realises as she faces down his anger, if she has been alive this whole time, this could quite easily seem a betrayal.

Except for the very important fact that he _knows_ her, the same and differently as how Mac does – but just as well, regardless – and to think that she would do that to him?

Mac finds herself suddenly, defensively furious with him, furious at what his words accuse Phryne of, and opens her mouth, ready to say so – because she knows. She _knows_, without doubt, that – whatever the reason may turn out to be – their ignorance to her continued existence had not been because Phryne had wanted it that way. She had not chosen to torture them like that, and Mac absolutely won’t let him blame her for it.

But then he speaks again, the words tortured, and Mac's fury stops in its own tracks, “She’s been alive, God knows where, going through God knows what, and we _gave up on her_, Mac.”

There’s rage in Jack’s eyes, but to Mac’s dismay as she actually _looks_ at it, it’s all turned inwards.

“I gave up on her,” he whispers, and then collapses to sit on the chaise, head in his hands.

Mac stares at him absolutely dumbstruck for a moment, then falls into a chair herself.

That hadn’t even occurred to her.

Mac had assumed that without context or experience, he had thought the worst of her. She'd assumed that he had not trusted this was not malicous; that he was feeling hurt and resentful and betrayed by her sudden and as yet unexplained reappearance. She had assumed Jack was angry, that his silence and his rage had been a kneejerk response to a supposed wrong.

It’s not that at all though, she realises abruptly now (and with a pang of her own shame for doubting him).

It's guilt.

Guilt she hadn't even stopped to consider herself.

Mac, accustomed as she’s so long been to Phryne coming and going from people’s lives as had pleased her, has slipped back into old habits. She had taken two seconds to confirm that this hadn’t been a deliberately cruel act, then immediately resumed her practice of accepting Phryne's sudden return and turning her attention to mending whatever the time and distance may have broken.

She hadn’t stopped to consider anything else about the situation the way that Jack – so different in his attitude towards her absence – has. She hadn't stopped to consider that if Phryne had wanted to be home this whole time, then perhaps it is them who disappeared on her, the moment they stopped looking.

“Oh,” she murmurs, as it hits her. “Oh _god_.”

No wonder Jack has been so silent. Here she’s been thinking he was stewing in rage over an imagined betrayal, but no, it’s their perceived betrayal that’s breaking him – not Phryne’s.

“How can I look at her, Mac?” Jack asks finally, raising his head from his palms. “How can I look her in the eye and tell her how long she’s been officially dead. How long it’s been since we stopped looking for her. How... Mac, how could we _ever_ stop looking for her?”

Mac swallows, considering it. She understands what he’s saying, what he’s feeling. She feels it, too, now she’s stopped to consider it. The thought that Phryne has been out there, wherever she’s been, trying to get home whilst they took her for dead and tried to carry on with their lives, is unthinkable.

It is more complicated than that, though, and she knows Jack knows that, too.

“We didn’t know,” she tells him, telling herself at the same time, trying to make the words firm enough they’ll both believe them. “We had no way to know, Jack – but she’s Phryne, she found a way despite that.”

“We could have helped,” he insists.

“Maybe,” Mac agrees. “Or maybe not. We don’t know until we know what happened to her – but even if we could have, Jack, don’t let your guilt turn her into something she’s not. You know that with or without us Phryne always finds a way. She’s here to prove it.”

At this he says nothing, considering for a moment before giving a slow nod.

“I know that,” he murmurs. “I do. It’s not her capability I question, though, Mac – it’s the fact that she was out there fighting and where was I? I was here drowning in my own self-pity.” The words come out bitter and furious, and Jack stands again, pacing back to his place by the fire.

He’s silent for several more moments, and Mac watches carefully, unsure where his emotions might take him next – but then the door flies open and both of them whip around to stare at the intrusion.

Phryne is there, clad in a silken robe but suspiciously dry, fury in her face.

Mac and Jack blink in surprise, shocked by her sudden entrance, and Mac opens her mouth to speak (to say what, she’s no idea, but this situation is hideous enough as is and she’s desperate to keep some sort of hold on it) but Phryne cuts her off.

“So, you can move?” she demands, glaring at Jack. “You can speak? You haven’t been tragically paralysed or struck dumb in my absence?”

Jack’s gaze immediately falls to the floor, full of shame, and Mac grimaces as she sees Phryne’s rage boil over. This doesn’t bode well.

“_Look at me_, Jack!” she yells, and Mac’s heart clenches at the pain she hears behind it. She also abruptly wishes she were anywhere else but here.

Much as she loves them both (and wants more than anything to help them), she’s absolutely no desire to be stuck in the middle of what she fears is about to become an incredibly tempestuous row.

Jack looks at her, jaw tight, and as their gazes meet Jack’s eyes fill again, and he lasts only a moment before turning away.

“I can’t,” he chokes out, and Mac sits there speechless, as if she’s watching a car crash in slow motion.

“Yes,” Phryne spits out, “you _can_. You don’t get to be angry, Jack! You don’t get to sulk and ignore me based on whatever assumptions you may have made about my absence! Not when none of this is my fault, I mean do you – ” her voice cracks, and Mac watches her choke down tears that are already threatening at the corners of her eyes. “Do you have _any idea_, Jack, any idea what I’ve been through to get home? You don’t get to shut me out before you've even bothered to hear an explanation!”

The misunderstanding is, well, understandable – because it’s the same assumption Mac had just made. They both, in their shock, have mistaken his anguish for anger.

“Phryne,” she attempts, because this at least she can help with, but Jack has lifted his head again, and there’s anger in his own gaze now, moving him to speech which cuts off any attempt Mac might have made at intervening.

“Do you think that little of me?” he asks, genuine hurt in his voice. “Do you really think I wouldn’t trust you have good reason behind being gone? A good explanation?”

“Well, I –” she starts, taken aback, anger falling from her face and turning instead to confusion.

“Do you want to know why I can’t look at you, Phryne?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before ploughing on. “I can’t look at you because we declared you dead fourteen months ago. _I_ declared you dead, following a sixth month investigation into your disappearance. That’s all.” He shrugs. “Sixth months. You’ve been gone for two years and I only looked for _sixth months_ of them before I gave you up for dead. That’s why I can’t look at you, Phryne. I’m not angry, I’m _ashamed_ – and I don’t know how to look at you knowing that I gave up.”

Phryne opens her mouth, eyes widening in realisation at her mistake, but Jack shakes his head.

To Mac’s surprise, Jack turns to her, expression lost and apologetic. “You should stay, Mac, I need… I can’t…” he takes a long steadying breath and then marches past both of them and through the door. The front door has slammed shut before either of them seem to be able to move.

She manages, though, in time at least to catch Phryne as the first surprised sob hits, and Mac pulls her into her arms, holding tight.

Phryne clutches at her, tears soaking into the shoulder of her jacket as she finally cries out the mess of emotions Mac can only begin to imagine are flowing through her. It must be a lot, after all, coming back from the dead – and that’s without everything that had come before or has started to come after. Briefly, she feels the urge to go find Jack and slap him about the head for adding onto it all. She can’t bring herself to full anger, though, because she understands. She feels it too, if less acutely (after all, she had not been the one who’d had to do the final deed, and she knows how much worse that had made the whole thing for him – the Commissioner had always been a sadistic bastard, though, and he’d wanted to punish Jack for dragging things out as long as he already had when the time came). Jack's guilt makes as much sense as Phryne's anger.

Phryne knows none of this, though. She has seen none of their side of things, just as they have seen none of Phryne’s. Jack certainly has not looked long enough – if only because he hasn’t been able to bring himself to – to study the extent of the pain that lies behind her eyes. They are each caught in a web of their own emotions, suspended in shock, and missing the rather important point that – above all else – she is alive and she is _home_. 

The both of them are absolute fools, Mac thinks, and she’d quite like to knock both their heads into a wall – and then maybe take a holiday far, far away from either of them so she can have some damn peace and quiet.

There’s still stitching to do, though, and damn it all if she doesn’t know she’s going to do it.

“It’s alright, darling,” Mac soothes, rubbing a hand up and down her back in a practice that once – in a different life, when Phryne had just escaped the jaws of hell and Mac’s friendship had been the only place she’d had any comfort – had been heartbreakingly frequent. Mac hasn’t had to do this for a long time, a fact she’s been grateful for – Phryne’s happiness and peace so hard won and well-deserved – but now, in the face of everything she had thought lost, she finds herself strangely comforted by it.

As the sobs slowly start to subside Mac guides her towards the chaise, sitting them down with one arm around her and waiting for whatever is about to come.

Honestly, she has no idea. She knows Phryne better than almost anyone but at the same time, in many ways, not at all. Phryne is, after all, unpredictable in all things.

Jack most certainly being one.

The silence drags out so long Mac finds she’s starting not to be able to stand it. She is concerned, she realises, that now the upset is passed, the initial wave of shock shed in tears, what’s left will be resentment.

It is a part truth that they abandoned her, after all, as needed or unneeded as their help may have been.

“Are you angry?” 

“Yes,” Phryne murmurs, and Mac swallows, nervous. “But not because of that,” she adds, throwing her a sideways glance which, tear-stained or not, makes no bones about the fact she clearly thinks they’re both idiots. “Anyone would make the same assumption, Mac, in the face of the facts.”

“Then why are you angry?” she asks.

Phryne lets out a soft laugh. “Oh, so many reasons – not all of them logical, I’ll admit. Mainly because today has been… a lot, and nothing like how I expected. Or wanted it,” she adds with a rueful smile.

“Hoping for more of an Easter Sunday feel, were you?” Mac asks, bumping her shoulder gently. “Or a second coming?” And Phryne shoots her a filthy glare.

“No,” she insists, although Mac is certain that that’s only partially true. “But I… I suppose I’ve been…” She takes a long breath, steadying herself. “I’ve been fighting so hard to get back, Mac, for so long. I’ve known I was going to see you all again for weeks now and I’ve been slowly building it up in my head but I didn’t… I never stopped to think about how things might have changed. I never _let_ myself think about how things might have changed, about what my absence meant for you all or how my coming might truly be received. And Jack he… Mac, it’s like he’s _unhappy_ that I’m back and I…” she breaks off, seeming – if only for a moment – utterly helpless, “I suppose it makes me realise I can’t just slip back into life like it never stopped. I can’t pick up where I left off. I’ve been fighting to get back to a life that no longer exists.”

Mac feels her heart clench at the sorrow in Phryne’s voice. There's plenty she could say to this, plenty of reassurances she could give that this isn't true – but she knows that right now this is mainly about Jack, and until he's back her words won't do much.

Instead, she asks the question she feels needs asking.

“What happened, Phryne? Where were you?”

Phryne takes a shaky inhale of breath and shakes her head. “I… I’m not sure I want to talk about it yet, Mac, I’m sorry.”

Mac looks at her, long and hard, deciding whether to push the issue – but Phryne is just pieces right now, carefully held together under the tears with wit and bravado but full of fault lines nonetheless. She doesn’t think pushing is the best idea, for now.

“Why didn’t you let us know, then?” she attempts instead, trying to get at least some sort of understanding. “Once you were on the way back, why not let us know so we’d be prepared?”

“I didn’t think you’d believe it,” she admits with a shrug. “I knew how long I’d been gone, and I knew I’d be officially dead – hell, I saw a newspaper article about it and I… there was no way to prove it was me so I thought you’d all just think it was a sick joke. I didn’t want to make it worse before I even got here. Not that my getting here seems to have made it any better,” she adds, a soft grumble.

Mac squeezes her shoulders. “I promise you it has.”

Phryne turns at this, shooting her a smile that Mac is surprised and pleased to recognise as genuine. “I missed you, Mac.”

“I missed you too, darling. More than my pride can stand.”

Phryne huffs out a laugh at this, leaning her head onto Mac’s shoulder.

“I never thought I’d have a home like this, Mac,” she breathes. “I never thought I’d want one. I don’t know what I’ll do now if I can’t rebuild it, not after everything I did to get back here.”

“It’s been rebuilt,” Mac tells her softly. “Jack and I did it for you.” 

There's a moment, then Phryne’s voice comes again, softly. “Why?”

Mac lets out a breath. “Oh, so many reasons,” she quotes her. “I think for Jack it’s just been a way to keep himself going, maybe to honour you at the same time, to feel like he was making you proud? For me, I suppose it was because there was always a part of me that hoped you'd come back.”

“I thought you thought I was dead?” Phryne asks, teasing and indignant.

“We did,” Mac hums, smirking, “but when has death ever stopped Phryne Fisher?”

Phryne sits up again, looking Mac in the eye, expression serious but more hopeful than it has been. “Thank you.”

Mac pulls her back in and presses a kiss to the top of her head. “You don't have to thank me, you fool.”

They sit in silence for several moments more, but something hangs in it, and Mac isn't at all surprised by the question when it comes, oddly tentative.

“So… Jack helped?”

Mac chuckles. “Eventually.”

Phryne sits up again, nodding, processing.

“He is happy,” Mac adds, because she thinks she needs to hear it. “You know that, don’t you? It’s just buried beneath everything else.”

She huffs. “Well, I wish it didn’t have to be buried quite so deeply.”

Mac shoots her a sympathetic smile, then stands, holding out a hand and helping her up again.

Jack will be back, she knows, and before too long – because the only thing that will haunt him more than his guilt is the dawning realisation that Phryne is _alive,_ and home, and he isn’t there with her. The minute that realisation hits she knows he’ll be back like a shot. In the meantime, she has doctoring to do.

“He’ll be back soon, believe me. Now until then go and get a goddamn bath, and I’ll go and see if Mr. Butler’s back yet so we can sort out getting some food into you.”

Phryne nods, shooting her another grateful smile, and Mac follows her out of the parlour into the hall – where she nearly walks into the back of her as she stops dead. Mac peers around her to see the front door, half open, Jack standing there with his hand still on the knob, frozen as he looks back at Phryne.

She sighs, long and hard.

They really don’t make it easy for her.

“Phryne, I – ” Jack starts, shaking his head but – Mac notes – taking care to look at her. “I’m sorry.”

She watches the tiny little battle that happens on Phryne’s face – the eternal stubbornness versus the utter relief in her as she looks at him. She already knows which will win, even if Phryne doesn’t.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again, breathless and desperate, and Phryne runs at him, launching herself into his arms.

Jack catches her, holds her, breathes her in with the countenance of a man who absolutely cannot believe his reality. This, Mac certainly understands. She’s unable to keep the smile from her face as she watches them, satisfied with the knowledge that this, at least, will find a way to sort itself out. It might take them a little time to rework the particulars, to untangle themselves from their own webs of emotion and _communicate_, but the way that they cling to each other speaks of foundations that are still as strong as ever.

“I’m sorry, too,” Phryne whispers as she pulls back to look at him. They stare into each other’s eyes, Jack’s hand cradling her face.

"You're alive," he breathes, and his eye remain watery but finally, he smiles. "You're _home_."

Phryne smiles in response, genuine again, staring back at him with all the same adoration that has burnt through the guilt in Jack's gaze. "I'm home."

They remain like this for several moments, until there is a flicker of movement from Phryne, and Mac manages to interject just in time.

“Absolutely not,” she calls before their lips can touch. “None of that, not yet, not until you’ve had a bath and _eaten_ something.”

Phryne turns to her, scandalised and annoyed. “Mac!”

“No arguments,” she insists, unashamed – it’s not the first time she’s interrupted them and she’s certain it won’t be the last. “If I let you start you won’t stop – and frankly you should really have a full medical exam before I sign off on any exciting or strenuous activity.”

Phryne glares at her, but Mac just raises an eyebrow. “Bath, Phryne, _now_.”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t argue. Instead she turns back to Jack, expression softening again as their eyes meet.

“Promise you won’t disappear again?” she asks, and it’s tentative, so much more in it than the question itself.

“I think that’s my line,” Jack replies, and it’s a joke but it doesn’t sound like one. Mac can hear the pain and the panic that lies underneath.

Phryne reaches up to cup his cheek, “Are you sure I can’t tempt you to come with me, Inspector?”

Something flickers across Jack's face at this – the last words she’d spoken to him before she’d taken off and disappeared. The last words, Mac realises, he will have thought he’d ever hear from her.

“You could tempt me anywhere right now,” he breathes. “To the moon and back so long as you promise to be there, too.”

Phryne reaches down to take his hand and then turns, staring back at Mac with a pleading expression, intention obvious. Mac looks at them, rumpled and tear-stained – Jack exhausted, Phryne too thin – but so much more alive and hopeful standing in front of her hand in hand than either of them have looked since she arrived; than she has seen since the day Phryne flew away and never came back.

Doctor Mac, it seems, can only compete with Friend Mac up to a certain point. She rolls her eyes and then fixes them with a firm stare.

“_Fine_ – but I meant what I said. Absolutely no funny business until I’ve checked you over.”

Phryne smirks, and Mac knows her well enough to know that it’s only for appearance’s sake – she’s pretty sure they’re both too exhausted, physically and emotionally, to _actually_ try and reunite properly just yet, anyway. She won’t begrudge them each other’s company in the meantime.

She watches Phryne lead Jack up the stairs and then retreats to the kitchen to investigate the food situation. Before she starts though, she steadies herself on the kitchen table, head falling to hang between her shoulders as she lets out a heavy sigh, everything finally hitting her.

That Phryne is alive, that Phryne _has been_ alive this whole time. That they let her down. That they absolutely _haven’t_ let her down, certainly not in the way that they have kept everything she built standing as best they could in spite of the weight of their grief threatening to crush it. That the small hope Mac has been carrying in her heart since the moment the plane was reported missing, the hope that had driven her to stitch them all back up, to kick Jack back into reality, to keep each and every one of them – herself included – going _just in case_, has been right. After all, if anyone can come back from the dead, she’s always thought it would be Phryne Fisher.

She will never stop being grateful that she’s right.


	11. "Stay with me"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you have to go?”
> 
> The words seem to echo through the silence of the room, bouncing off walls cast in shadow and back to settle on both of them like a shroud, encasing them in a cocoon where the only thing that exists is this, now, and the unanswered question. 
> 
> G

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did it! Sorta. I finally managed to write a drabble. In that it's only just over 1k. I consider this an achievement. Naturally, to do this I had to make it stylised and sad, but it is whumptober, after all...

“Do you have to go?”

The words seem to echo through the silence of the room, bouncing off walls cast in shadow and back to settle on both of them like a shroud, encasing them in a cocoon where the only thing that exists is this, now, and the unanswered question.

“I should.”

The words come quickly, as if haste might make them easier, but if anything it only seems to cause them to hurt more. When no reply is forthcoming Jack turns his head, eyes roaming her face.

“Does it bother you?”

This question hangs in the air even more pointedly than the first, chiming across the half a foot of space between them like the damning toll of a church bell.

Phryne is absolutely silent for a moment, then she reaches across to find his hands atop the sheets and tangle their fingers together before she speaks.

“Yes.”

“I don't want it to,” he sighs, and she lifts their joined hands into the air above them, twisting and turning to examine the lines she's come to know so well.

“It only bothers me because I'm not ashamed, Jack, and I don't like having to act as if I am.”

“I'm not ashamed either,” he insists.

“Then stay with me.”

Finally, she turns her gaze to him, eyes locking with his – not quite begging, but not without hope.

“Just stay, Jack.”

He looks at her for a long moment, still searching.

“If I stay your Aunt will see me.”

“If you’re not ashamed then that wouldn’t bother you,” she points out, words sharp, and she pulls her fingers from his, sliding from the bed. “You have to make up your mind eventually, Jack.”

Jack sighs, eyes following her as she retrieves a robe and ties it around herself, crossing to the window and stubbornly not looking back at him. There is a soft, spring rain falling outside – the light, regular patter of it against the window an odd juxtaposition with the heavy staccato of his heart as he looks at her.

He hesitates a moment longer, then throws back the sheets and crosses to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his face in the curve where her shoulder meets her neck. There is a moment’s pause from her, but then her arms come to rest over his, thumbs brushing featherlight across his knuckles.

“I love you,” he whispers into her skin and she shivers – at the warmth of his breath, or his words, or maybe both – but shakes her head.

“How can you love me if you’re ashamed of me, Jack?”

She turns in his arms, eyes bright with anger and hurt, steel slipping into her expression, but he meets her with a gaze just as passionate.

“I’m not ashamed of you. I never have been, I never will be. And if they way we've pursued this has made you feel like I am, Phryne, then I am more sorry for that than you know.”

Her jaw clenches and unclenches at the apology, gaze flicking to his lips and back, but she remains steely as she stares him down.

“Then stay.”

“I will.”

She blinks in mild surprise at this. “You will?”

Jack reaches a hand out to graze his fingers across her cheek with gentle pressure.

“Yes.”

Phryne’s expression turns indignant, but she doesn’t shy away from the touch.

“What if Aunt Prudence sees you?”

Jack sighs deeply, but his mouth turns up at the corners.

“Well then, I’ll tell her I’ve been frequently and enthusiastically bedding her niece for six months – but that she needn’t worry, because the Dutch cap is proving a largely effective tool to prevent any family shame.”

Phryne rolls her eyes at this, but Jack’s fingers firm where they sit on her face, cradling it so that she looks at him again.

“I’ll tell her that I’m not ashamed, Phryne,” he says then, with the utmost sincerity. “I will never be ashamed to love you, however we choose to express it.”

“I don’t need you to shout it from the rooftops, Jack,” Phryne sighs, serious. “I just have no desire to feel like our relationship is a dirty secret. I'm not ashamed of my choices, or how I live my life, and I refuse to live like I am, even for you.”

“I don’t want you to have to live like that,” he insists. “We’ve been doing it this way because it was easier, it removed the pressures of things we didn’t need or want put on us but… Phryne, if this bothers you that much, then we can change it. Easy.”

“Is it?” she pushes, and her hand moves to where his sits on her face, covering his fingers with hers. “Is it easy? Maybe Aunt Prudence will be easy, or Dot and Hugh – but what about the Commissioner, what about Russell Street? What will you tell them, Jack?”

“That it’s none of their damn business,” he growls, dropping his hand but keeping their fingers together.

Phryne’s expression saddens, steel liquifying into sorrow. She lifts their joined hands to her heart and covers them with her other one, staring up at him.

“You know it wouldn't be that simple.”

Jack huffs out a sigh. “Not for any lack of hoping.”

Phryne examines him with careful, sad eyes. “I can’t be what ruins you, Jack. That would ruin us, too, and then the whole thing would be pointless.”

“You would never be pointless.”

“_Jack_.”

“I _know_.”

He sighs, head drooping, and she removes the hand atop both theirs to lace her fingers into his dishevelled hair and pull him forward so that she can drop a kiss to his head.

“I love you, too, Jack Robinson,” she whispers against his hair, and he looks up again, eyes stormy.

“I wish there was a way we could – ”

“I know,” she murmurs, and smiles, soft, though tears glisten unshed in her lashes. “But I don't think there is – not right now, at least.”

Jack nods, then pulls her mouth to his. The kiss is frantic, desperate, and they part again breathing heavily, foreheads pressed together.

Jack swallows, choked, and Phryne reaches up to stroke his cheek.

“It’s okay, Jack.”

“It isn’t.”

“It will be.”

Jack's fingers rise to clutch hers in a mirror of their position before, holding her fingers against his cheek, then he turns his head beneath her hand to press his lips to her skin, seeming to breathe her in with the motion. His eyes fall closed, and they stay there, unmoving, for a long moment until finally, he speaks.

“Do I have to go?”

And the words seem to echo through the silence of the room, bouncing off walls cast in shadow and back to settle on both of them like a shroud, encasing them in a cocoon where the only thing that exists is this, now – and the unanswered question. 


	12. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day Tobias Butler finally snaps is a Wednesday in spring, three weeks after Jack Robinson comes to stay. 
> 
> Combined prompt with Day 28 - Beaten. G.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Predictably, for me, whumptober has now descended into the realms of crack. That's right, I decided to write 5000 words from Mr. Butler's perspective. You're... welcome? Anyway, other than having to come to terms with the fact that Mr. Butler probably wouldn't refer to himself as Mr. Butler and thus I'd have to use his _actual_ given name - this was actually a lot of fun to write for a whumptober wind down.

Tobias Butler is, and always has been, a patient man. It’s a quality his parents had nurtured in him and congratulated him on throughout his youth, and one in which he has taken significant pride ever since.

It is, without doubt, the quality that had first won him his wife’s affections – and kept them on him throughout their life together. It is also the reason he has done so well for himself in his career – worked from family to family with such excellent recommendations paving his way for him – and it is why, he knows, he had been first recommended to Miss Fisher.

Her aunt had clearly assumed she’d need a butler with saint-like patience.

This, as it transpires, is not wholly wrong. It is, perhaps, not quite the right way to look at it (Tobias, after all, thinks of his patience as a virtue not a skill – it is something he has been blessed with naturally as opposed to something he exerts any great effort in enacting), but he finds that patience certainly _helps_.

In truth, most of her antics don’t phase him. He is a worldly man – has worked for all sorts of people, seen a great many things, and even been to war – and whilst, privately, he might find a few of the things his employer gets up to a little on the odd side of normal, he quite honestly has never seen anything _wrong_ with any of it. He has seen some great atrocities in his time – at war, in homes, between so-called loved ones – and for many of them he has had no choice but to stand by and watch.

Phryne Fisher, for all her quirks, has a good heart. In her home he never encounters that feeling of powerlessness he so often has been made to feel before as he watches those around him act heartlessly, and it’s this – above all – that means he knows he will happily remain in her employ until she no longer needs him, or he can no longer work. Her house is a sanctuary greater than he thinks she may ever realise, her generosity of spirit infecting all those who she extends it to, and by the time he has passed a year in her service, Tobias feels proud to be a member of such a well-intentioned (if mismatched) little family.

This is not to say, though, that sometimes, even _his_ patience isn’t stretched a little thin by the comings and goings of the Fisher household. Though he’s never been stretched so far he’s actually lost his temper, not once.

And this is why it surprises him, more than anything, that when he does it’s not over any of the things that have pushed him close in the past (Bert and Cec stealing the last of his jam for the fifth time in a month, Dorothy complaining about Hugh at length but staunchly ignoring any advice on the matter, even the time Miss Fisher brought home an attractive young artist who managed to get oil paint in _everything_).

No, the day Tobias Butler finally snaps is a Wednesday in spring, three weeks after Jack Robinson comes to stay.

*

He is less surprised than he perhaps politely should be when Miss Fisher telephones to ask him to prepare the best guest bedroom – but then, he hears it had been a nasty beating the Inspector took, and he knows without even having to ask that his employer won’t be inclined to just let it go if her inspector is injured.

He’ll probably need a fair amount of help during his recovery, too, and he doesn’t see Miss Fisher letting the man go anywhere else for it.

So he prepares the second best guest bedroom and, on Miss Fisher’s return, informs her that the best guest bedroom had had a touch of damp to it, and that the second would perhaps be better for the Inspector if he’s in recovery – and lets her draw her own assumptions about the fact that the second best guest bedroom is directly adjacent to hers.

Tobias is a worldly man, after all, and he certainly is suffering no illusions when it comes to the direction that the Inspector and his employer’s relationship is heading in. He only wishes it might _hurry up_ and head there – because lord knows he is beginning to tire of resetting the stage for them every morning (of refilling the whiskey decanter, clearing away the draughts board, unfolding the pages of whatever Shakespeare they’d been using to flirt with, and generally acting like he doesn’t know that it had been long past midnight when the Inspector had finally let propriety drag him away and leave Miss Fisher to slink upstairs solo again).

He’s not the only one, he knows, who’s anxious for them to stop beating around the bush. Oh, it’s absolutely none of their business, of course, but slowly the two detectives have become so stubbornly lovesick that none of them can help it being their business – and the conspiracy to help with this however they can goes much further than him.

The first time the subject had come up – around a breakfast table that Miss Fisher had been too preoccupied creeping around a dockyard looking for clues to be at – had rather shocked him. It wasn’t good form to gossip about one’s employer – certainly not about their love life – and he’d only been narrowly beaten to shutting the conversation down by Dorothy’s determined loyalty and Catholic upbringing, as she’d swiftly biffed Bert around the ear with a scowl.

Slowly, though, the topic had found a way to invade their conversations despite the impropriety of it. Perhaps because it was a little funny, perhaps because despite any teasing they were all more than a little fond of both parties, and just wanted to see them happy, or perhaps even because the frustration had eventually started to become too much for all of them _not_ to just give up and talk about it.

Once it had started, as well, they’d all found that the flood gates stayed resolutely open, and there was nothing for it but to admit defeat and at least pledge to doing their part to help.

So, he does what he can – whilst still remaining the patient professional he so prides himself on being. He shuffles and manoeuvres here and there – fresh glasses always ready, an object removed before it can cause distraction (maybe even the odd white lie to an ill-timed phone call from Mrs. Stanley), like a stage-hand setting a scene to run smoothly for actors, he does his humble best to keep their unique but charming romance running without interruption.

Heaven knows, they don’t need any more obstacles.

Thus, one can only hope (and he certainly does), that as unfortunate as this latest incident might have been, it might finally prove the weight needed to tip them over. Hell, he’ll hose down the walls of the best guest bedroom to keep up the illusion if necessary.

Miss Fisher, though – for all her stubbornness – is not stupid, and she smirks at him, a glint in her eye that says she knows her house does _not _have damp but that she does know she chose her staff exceptionally well.

“How thoughtful of you, Mr. Butler – really, you are a treasure.”

And with this she rushes off again (perhaps to hose down the walls herself, he certainly won’t question it) and he returns to the kitchen to prepare some sandwiches. The Inspector will no doubt want his favourite, and Miss Fisher will want him to have them, so he might as well whip them up now before he’s asked – then he can be out of their hair again as quickly as possible once the Inspector is installed in his room.

He watches on in curiosity (an offer of help made but quickly waved off) as Bert and Cec help the Inspector up the stairs. His injuries look alarming, though the man himself insists they aren’t as bad as they seem – the bruising mostly superficial – but it’s not his winces of pain as he jolts broken ribs with each step that Tobias finds catch his attention. Instead, it’s the winces of pain that flicker in reflection in Miss Fisher’s eyes as she watches, arms folded across herself as if holding herself back, lip seeming unknowingly clenched between her teeth.

Her concern is almost tangible when watched, but the Inspector’s back is turned, and so it sits unspoken and unacknowledged in her face – and when he finally does turn to speak to her, a joke of some sorts that Tobias doesn’t even bother to listen to, her arms fall quickly to her sides and mirth draws itself across her worry like a curtain, hiding it from him.

He doesn’t know if this act is a conscious one, but finally he thinks he understands the problem.

He has seen them flirt, banter, tease. This, they do almost unashamedly in front of an audience (though often he thinks they might have forgotten that the audience is there). He has seen them bicker, disagree, fight even. He’s even caught the odd adoring look being batted about behind the other’s back – but this, _this_ is clearly the issue.

Both of them are intelligent enough not to be unaware of the desire, or affection, that exists between them – and whilst he has the good manners not to eavesdrop on conversations, he is intelligent enough not to be unaware of what reasons and parts of themselves they might think stand in the way of actual romance despite said affection.

He realises now, though, that despite the explicitness of their flirting, and the dance they’ve perhaps all thought is partially for fun, the problem might just be that they _aren’t_ as aware as everyone thinks they are (themselves included). Because if they are both as reticent in showing the depth of their care to each other’s faces as Miss Fisher has just been – slipping on a mask of coy indifference or humour when addressing matters of seriousness – perhaps they are genuinely unaware that this is more than just a fun dance to the other partner.

Perhaps they are genuinely unaware that they are both as in love as each other, and that their obstacles may not be anywhere near as great as they imagine.

If this is the case, he thinks, then they are both idiots – but rectifiable idiots, at least.

This beating the Inspector has taken may be even more crucial than he’d originally thought to helping them realise their feelings, and he’ll be damned if he’ll allow the man to leave the house before one or other of them has had some sort of epiphany.

With the look that has appeared again, unshaded, on Miss Fisher’s face now the Inspector’s eyes are no longer on her, though, he doesn’t think it could possibly take _that_ much longer.

With a shake of his head he disappears back to the kitchen to put the kettle on and ready the tray of sandwiches.

Surely, he thinks, in such close quarters now, they will not be able to hide the truth from each other – and this thought contents him.

He hums to himself as he brews the tea, smiling at Dorothy as she enters the kitchen and settles herself to start peeling potatoes.

Yes, he’s confident that this is how it will all finally come to light, and things will sort themselves out.

It’s only a matter of time.

*

Time, as it transpires, moves a lot more slowly when one is sharing space constantly with two lovelorn fools tiptoeing around the edges of an epiphany.

He’d thought, mistakenly it seems, that being in close quarters might help the two of them; might make it impossible to hide the longing that burns like fire in each of their gazes the moment the other isn’t looking at them. It’s a true talent, he has to acknowledge, switching from adoration to amusement, care to coyness, quite instantaneously – and he almost respects them for it – or might, were it not so frustrating to witness.

He knows (and, God help him, he really _does_ try not to overhear these things, but Phryne Fisher is unsubtle at the best of times, least of all when she’s ranting, and sometimes he cannot help but be in the wrong place when Doctor MacMillan is having her ear chewed off, or she and the Inspector are fighting) that they are uncertain of each other’s willingness to bend. He knows that neither of them has been subtle when it comes to their misgivings about how successful romance may or may not be between them. He also knows that if they stopped being coy about the obvious depth of their feelings it might just help resolve the issue once and for all.

Their misgivings, he sees (with obvious frustration) come from misapprehensions about the other’s feelings, and it’s enough to make him want to scream at the both of them.

Briefly, he considers just hiding fake notes from each other that say, “I love you, you fool,” with their morning tea, but he quickly shuts this down as ridiculous.

Almost as ridiculous as their apparent inability to communicate.

After almost two weeks, he knows he is not the only one who is frustrated that they both seem to be tiptoeing around the point – and he finds himself almost relieved when Bert brings it up again over their morning toast.

“So, have those finally two hauled each other’s ashes yet?”

That said, he really does wish they could be a little more delicate about it.

“Yeah, they must have,” Cec chips in around a mouthful of jam-laden bread. “They’ve been living in the same house for two weeks surely even they can’t be so stubborn as to keep putting it off when they’re sleeping right next door to each other.”

At this, Dot gives Cec a little slap on the shoulder, glancing up at Tobias quickly before looking back at him. “I told you that was a _secret_, Cec,” she hisses.

“Oh, don’t worry, Dorothy – I’ve all but given up at this stage,” he assures her with a sigh, sitting down with his own cup of tea. “The only people who don’t know they’re in love is _them_.”

“Who are we talking about – the Inspector and Miss Fisher?” Jane asks as she enters the kitchen and slides into a seat at the table.

They all nod, and Jane sighs in agreement.

“I just don’t understand how they don’t _realise_.”

“Because they won’t let each other,” he says, mournfully.

“Nah, they’re too bloody stubborn,” Bert adds.

“Who’s stubborn?”

They all turn as one to the lady of the house as she breezes in, unsuspecting, and snags a piece of toast from the middle of the table. She takes a bite, and chews – increasingly slowly as she takes in all their silent faces.

She swallows. “Am I missing something?”

“No!” Dorothy exclaims, and they all shake their heads.

Tobias sighs to himself internally. Much as he loves them, they are all a bit hopeless sometimes.

Miss Fisher narrows her eyes at the assembled room, looking from one to the other with suspicion for a moment before taking another bite of toast and eyeing them all down as she chews it.

“Well, I’m sure I’ll find out whatever it is eventually,” she says finally, with a smirk and a shrug. “Mr. Butler, would you mind taking the Inspector up his breakfast – I do believe I heard him up and about.”

He hopes, for Bert’s sake, that she doesn’t notice the choked down laugh at this.

“Of course, miss,” he responds, “right away.”

“Thank you, Mr. B, you’re a treasure.”

It would seem Bert’s life is safe, at least for now, as with this she snags another piece of toast and saunters out again, seemingly oblivious.

Dot turns an accusing glare on Bert – who pointedly ignores it and reaches instead for the jam – and Cec turns a pitying look up to Tobias.

“I don’t know how you do it, Mr. B, I’d’ve lost me temper with ‘em by now.”

And Tobias sighs – because, to his immense concern, he almost thinks he might be headed in that direction.

“Thankfully, Cecil, I was blessed with a good deal of patience,” he tells him. “Besides, as much as we might all like to step in, I’m sure our interfering won’t do anything to help matters – all we can do is wait.”

Cec inclines his head at this in some form of agreement, and then returns to his toast.

It’s frustrating – endlessly so – but he knows as he says the words that they’re true. Even if it _were_ their place to interfere, he seriously doubts it would go over well with either detective if they did.

No, as much as he wishes he could do more – could yell at them, bash their heads against a wall, or even slip notes into their morning tea – he knows that patience is the only road.

Surely, he thinks, they’ll _have_ to realise, eventually?

*

It’s Mrs. Stanley’s visit that gets him in the end.

He’s been as patient as ever, attentive and helpful. He’s run every part of this like absolute clockwork to try and get the pieces in the right place so that they might both give in – but Miss Fisher’s aunt seems (inadvertently, of course, he can hardly blame the poor woman) to knock them all out of place again with a well-meaning, if poorly judged comment.

Not that he knows exactly what was said, of course – it’s the aftermath he hears, once Mrs. Stanley has again departed and Miss Fisher is free to rant about it. And rant she seems to be – at length, to the Inspector.

He only catches the odd snippet loud enough to reach him as he sits polishing the silver in the dining room, but it’s enough to get an idea towards what the comment might have been.

“Absolute bloody cheek!”

Is how it starts – and Tobias debates getting up to close the door – but he’s weary and fed up, and honestly could do with a little leg up in this ridiculous game, improper or no.

There’s nothing else definably audible for a moment or two, then, “She’s the one always banging on about charity – would she rather I leave you to fend for yourself?”

This is closely followed by, “Oh, of course that’s what she _meant_, Jack!”

To which he finds he can only roll his eyes. He’s positive that he and his wife, in all their years of marriage, never sounded quite as married as the two of them do already – though that could, admittedly, be a temperament issue.

“I don’t care what people think!”

Miss Fisher is certainly a touch more volatile than he or his wife had ever been.

There’s more quiet after this, though, that he has to assume (or hope) is the Inspector trying to calm her down some way or another, until, “I’m perfectly capable, Miss Fisher.”

And it’s raised, but it’s also closer – as if he has moved to the door.

“No, please,” she responds, and it’s biting. “Allow me to get Mr. Butler to help you – I certainly wouldn’t want you staying a moment longer than is proper.”

“_Phryne_.”

“No, no – I insist!” At this the parlour door swings open, and Tobias turns his attention quickly back to the spoon that has (certainly to a younger him with more patience and less attachment to his employer) quite impolitely become almost forgotten in his grip. “Ah, look, he’s right here – Mr. B?”

At this he looks up again, alert and cheerful as he can manage considering that it sounds like their argument (whatever comment it is, exactly, that sparked it) is ruining all his hopes of this confinement pushing them in the right direction.

“Can I help with something, Miss Fisher?” he asks, laying the spoon carefully onto the table.

“Yes – the Inspector would like to head back to his own home for the remainder of his convalescence, would you mind awfully helping him pack?”

Behind her, Inspector Robinson shoots her a look that is as exasperated as it is resigned, then turns his attention to him.

“That won’t be necessary, thank you, Mr. Butler.”

Miss Fisher turns on him, anger flaring. “Oh, are you staying now, Jack? Or were you just planning to lift a suitcase with broken ribs?”

“I’ll _manage_,” he grits out in response.

“So, you are leaving?” the hurt in it is barely hidden. “Because of some ridiculous comment my aunt made?”

“Was it ridiculous, Phryne? Or was she just right? My _being here_ is what’s ridiculous.”

And Tobias despairs.

“Oh, so a friend can’t look after another friend anymore, is that what you’re saying?”

They are absolutely hopeless.

“Not like this – not without implications!”

They have each moved far closer than surely they both know is appropriate into each other’s space, staring the other down – and, he’s sure, have quite forgotten his continued presence.

“Do implications really matter more to you than your health, Jack?”

“Of course they don’t, you know I don’t care.”

“Do I know that?” she insists, indignant. “Or was this another conversation you had with yourself that I’ve missed?”

“You’re one to talk – you’re not exactly forthright on what one might consider the truth.”

Hurt and anger both ripple over her at this – and from the look on the Inspector’s face it’s evident he knows he’s put his foot in it. When she speaks again, her voice is calmer, lower, the anger turning from fire to ice.

“I don’t lie about anything that matters, Jack, and if you knew me at all you’d know that.”

He sees the Inspector pause, too, his own anger stopping in its tracks and back-peddling into apology.

“Phryne, I –”

“Maybe you should go,” she snaps at him. “I wouldn’t want anyone to start questioning the true nature of our relationship.”

And the sneer that she adds to the words leaves no doubt about what it is, in fact, that her aunt might have said to them.

Hurt hangs heavily in both their faces, and they stare each other down in an odd, slightly heartbroken stalemate.

Sometimes, despite its capacity, even his patience has been stretched a little thin by the comings and goings of the Fisher household. Though he’s ever been stretched so far he’s actually lost his temper, not once.

He can cope, it would seem, with Bert and Cec stealing the last of his jam for the fifth time in a month, with Dorothy complaining about Hugh at length but staunchly ignoring any advice on the matter, he had even coped with the time Miss Fisher brought home an attractive young artist who managed to get oil paint in everything.

He can cope with the two of them flirting, bantering, teasing. He can cope with them bickering, disagreeing, fighting even. He can cope with watching them batt adoring looks about behind the other’s back or stare longingly up staircases with concern sitting heavily in their eyes.

He has coped with three weeks of them sharing space and _still_ stubbornly refusing to tell each other the truth.

He cannot, it would appear, cope with them shutting each other down over something so utterly ridiculous. Not when he knows neither of them really care about it anyway. Not when the issue is being discussed absent of the context of how they really feel about each other.

His patience, it would seem, has finally come to an end.

This, he only realises however, after he has already said, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, will you both just stop being so stubborn.”

Two sets of stunned eyes turn on him, and Tobias blinks as he realises what’s happened, that he has spoken aloud, that he has, at last, lost his patience.

His mouth falls open, mortified, apology ready on his tongue – but Miss Fisher speaks before he can.

“Mr. B!” she exclaims, a shocked, amused breath – and the heartbreak that had been hanging in her a moment earlier has been replaced by a look of wonder, mouth curling up into a smile.

“I’m –” he stammers out anyway, “I’m terribly sorry, miss, I don’t know what came over me.”

She turns to face him fully, folding her arms across herself and narrowing her eyes at him, smile still playing on her lips.

“Are you sure about that, Mr. Butler?”

“Well, I –” he pauses, looks from her to the Inspector – who now her back is turned seems to have returned from shock at Tobias’ outburst to longing again – and back. He sighs.

Ridiculous. They are _ridiculous_. So, if he’s going to lose his temper, he might as well do it properly.

“Well, no,” he responds, and Miss Fisher’s eyebrows shoot up. “I’m tired of you two acting like lovesick children, actually.”

The shock returns to both their faces, eyes widening, and he uses it as opportunity to plough on.

“You dance around each other in this ridiculous game of cat and mouse, play coy with your true feelings, tell yourselves that it’ll never work and you’re destined to stay in this stalemate – but then you fight about the fact that you’re not getting anywhere, anyway. You know, if the two of you would both just stop acting like fools and allow each other to see how much you truly care, then perhaps you could work it out and the rest of us could continue polishing silver in peace.”

There is absolute silence for a moment – In which Tobias quickly cycles through several levels of shock and horror and convinces himself this is how he will first find himself dismissed from a job – and then his brief spiral is interrupted by the sound of laughter.

The Inspector’s laughter – swiftly followed by Miss Fisher’s.

The two of them descend into absolute fits, in fact, until Inspector Robinson is clutching at his broken ribs and wincing. Miss Fisher notices this, of course, and her own laughter starts to peter out.

“Careful, Jack, don’t break another rib,” she scolds him, and he snorts, chuckling again and wincing with it.

“Would it really matter if I did?” he asks, and it’s a joke, but there’s sincerity lying just beneath it.

The laughter finally stops, and Miss Fisher glances over to Tobias, then back to Jack, resolve settling over her face.

“Yes,” she tells him, and the Inspector blinks in surprise at the honesty in it. “Yes, Jack, of course it would. I can’t stand seeing you hurt, don’t you know that?”

Tobias blinks himself, wondering if he’s heard correctly or if his mind has snapped along with his temper.

She turns back to him then, and there’s something settling in her gaze that looks oddly like thanks. “Mr. Butler – would you mind giving me and the Inspector a moment, please?”

And lord knows, he wouldn't. “Of course not, miss,” he replies, and hurries quickly out to the kitchen.

Once there he decides it might be an idea to make sandwiches, and quickly sets about gathering things together – grateful that whatever discussion is now happening on the other side of the door is at least happening in hushed tones.

He really _does_ try not to eavesdrop.

It’s at least a half an hour later when Miss Fisher sticks her head around the kitchen door, and to his surprise there’s an apologetic smile painted across her face. Why, he’s no idea – it’s really him who should be apologising, after all.

“Hello, Mr. B,” she starts, a little tentative, and he stands from where he’s been sitting with his tea – pondering on the conversation next door (and his position, he really is a little ashamed of himself for his comportment).

“Miss Fisher,” he greets, “I really am so terribly sorry for my behaviour it was absolutely –”

“Warranted?” she cuts him off, coming to sit down at the table and waving him back into his own seat again. “I think it was absolutely warranted, in fairness, Mr. Butler.”

He can only raise an eyebrow at this, and the corner of her mouth pulls up into a smile.

“The Inspector and I have…” she takes a breath, eyes on her fingers where they sit on the kitchen table, evidently looking for the right words, “had a little chat, and it turns out you… may have been right, about certain things.” She looks up at him with an expression that is definitely apologetic. “Like the fact that we have, perhaps, both been acting… like fools.”

He winces as his word is thrown back at him, but Miss Fisher reaches out to cover one of his hands with her own. “I think we realised that if even you, Mr. Butler – saintly as you are – had lost your patience with us, then it might perhaps be past time we had a real conversation.”

He swallows, taking a breath before speaking. “Well, I can’t lie, I’m glad to hear that, miss – but I was still miles out of line, and I’ll understand if you feel the need to take action accordingly.”

She huffs out a small laugh and squeezes his hand. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. B – and consequently, I’ll be deducting five percent from the fifteen percent pay rise I was going to be giving you.”

His mouth falls open, shocked, and she smirks at him before standing.

“I should go back to check on Jack,” she says, “I am a little worried about those ribs – besides, I think we have a good deal more to, er, discuss.”

Tobias finally comes around enough to smile at this.

“You know, miss, I am a little concerned that the damp may have spread to the second best guest room as well – perhaps I should move the Inspector’s things to your room, just in case.”

Her eyes light up at this, a wicked grin spreading across her face.

“Oh, Mr. Butler, you really are a treasure.”

And with this she slinks off again, upstairs he assumes, and hopefully not solo. He takes out a cover for the tray of sandwiches and sets them neatly to one side for them for later, and then pops the kettle on the stove ready to make himself tea.

He is, and always has been, a patient man. It’s a quality in which he has taken significant pride, his entire life. At the smiles that seem immovable from his employer and her inspector’s faces when they finally surface again for breakfast the next morning, though, at the stunned silence and then uproarious glee that follows from everyone else as the two of them walk into the kitchen hand in hand, snag several slices of toast, and disappear off again – Tobias thinks that maybe, losing your patience every now and then isn’t such a terrible thing after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Just an additional quick note to say that in amongst this year's prompts, I aim to finish off some of those that never made it to publishing from last year, look for them in the orginal, if you're interested.


End file.
